If you’ve never read anything by G.K. Chesterton or Rudyard Kipling, you are missing out. Both British writers were at the height of their powers toward the end of the Victorian period, and both are out of fashion in academia today. Which is one in a long list of indictments of academia today, if you ask me.
And you should always ask me.
Chesterton (1874-1936) was an essayist and fiction writer; he wrote the Father Brown detective stories, as well as essays on various topics, and Christian apologetics (he was Catholic). His writing is consistently witty and profound, but also easily approachable – a rare combination.
Kipling (1865-1936) is more famous, having been widely read and anthologized, and having turned down an offered knighthood and position as Poet Laureate. Among his most famous poems are “If,” “Gunga Din,” and “The Power of the Dog.” The latter poem is one that I sadly know I’ll be referencing in a future column, as Cassie the Wonder Dog seems to be becoming more deaf and unsteady by the week. (The last line of every stanza of that poem is a variation on “giving your heart to a dog to tear.”)
So what do these great writers have to do with the fate of NYC?
They both communicated the traditional – one might even say conservative – wisdom that New York voters rejected last Tuesday.
A common principle among conservatives is giving respect and deference to tradition and ideas that have stood the test of time. That doesn’t mean resisting all change – the geniuses who wrote our constitution built into it the means of amending it over time, for example – but it does mean having the humility to learn from the wisdom of our forebears. And it cautions us about the arrogance of assuming that we know more than anyone ever, and can thus overturn existing systems and build a perfect new world, or political system, with no unintended consequences.
Chesterton summarized these two mindsets in a parable that has come to be called “Chesterton’s fence.” It describes a foolish person walking through the woods and coming across a fence at the edge of a meadow. He doesn’t know why it’s there, and since it impedes his progress, he wants to tear it down.
Chesterton suggests that if you don’t understand why the fence is there, you shouldn’t tear it down until you do understand. The implication is that once the fence is down, you’ll find out why it was there, to your regret. For example, the horses or the bull that the fence had enclosed might show up, and either trample or gore you, and then escape.
In 2025, this concept can be paraphrased as “FAFO.” And I think New Yorkers just voted to tear down Chesterton’s fence – the FA phase – and they’re soon going to find out.
“Why are rents so high?” they say.
“Because of one-party Democrat rule!” we shout. But they can’t hear us. (Maybe because the Muslim call to prayer is drowning us out?) So in comes Mamdani, and if he does freeze the rent…the housing stock will deteriorate and rent will become even more unaffordable. (Unexpectedly!)
“Why should we have to pay to ride the bus?” they say. Annndddd…the buses are soon rolling flophouses for the deranged and the addicted and the shiftless, shooting up and treating the bus like a bear treats the woods.
“Let’s jack up the taxes on the evil 1% who already pay literally half the taxes in the city!” they say.
Annnndddd… they’re gone. And the city revenues collapse, and the quality-of-life spiral tips more steeply downward, into a death spiral.
Kipling saw all this coming in his poem, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” written one hundred and six years ago last month.
In the 19th century, copybooks were used in education, as models for students to practice their penmanship. On the top of each page would be written a sentence or two which the students would repeatedly copy below. And because teachers back then weren’t insane or depraved, and didn’t focus primarily on new ways to get drag queens and porn into the curricula, most of the sentences to be copied contained a bit of wisdom or moral teaching.
Common sources for copybook headings were maxims from wisdom literature, the Bible, and great thinkers. The idea was that students would get a win-win: better handwriting, with some moral instruction too.
Kipling’s poem contrasts The Gods of the Copybook Headings (i.e. traditional, conservative, common-sense/wisdom) with The Gods of the Marketplace (i.e. trendy, faddish, foolishness). I like to call the latter “the Democratic National Platform, circa 1980 – present.”
Which is why I’m no poet.
The poem has 10 stanzas, but I’ll share just four of them with you.
Stanza 5 sums up the wisdom of peace through strength, and the second amendment:
“When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘Stick to the Devil you know.’
Stanza 6 describes the results of leftist “free love” and gender feminism:
“On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘The Wages of Sin is Death.’”
Stanza 7 handles socialist economics:
“In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘If you don’t work you die.’”
The final stanza predicts the fate of Mamdani’s New York City, and our country, if the socialists take over:
“And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
I’m sometimes called a hilarious genius – and who am I to fly in the face of public opinion? – but I’ve clearly got nothing on Chesterton and Kipling! In fact, I tried to write a new stanza for Kipling’s poem, but this was the best I could do:
“If the Democrats manage to beat us, we’ll all be neck-deep in a fight,
And forget what was once common knowledge, along with the good and the right.
Like there is no such thing as a free lunch, and a mad dog like Crockett will bite,
And Schiff’s got a neck like a pencil, and Liz Warren’s incredibly white.”
#wemustneverstopmockingher
I know: I’m no Rudyard! (But can you believe that he never used a single hashtag in all of his writings? I’ve got him there, at least.)
A few critical souls – okay, many critical souls – have pointed out that I can be a little wordy, and I can’t deny that. Which is even more reason to tip my hat to Kipling, because the man summed up the fatal flaw at the heart of the welfare state AND the leftist soft-on-crime legal philosophy in ONE line: “When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins.”
And Kipling rightly foresees the inevitable result, only two lines later: Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, NYC, and every other big blue city.
Or as he puts it, “terror and slaughter return!”
We should all pray for New Yorkers, because they’re about to receive what they voted for, good and hard. And I hope we can all use what’s going to happen there as a lesson and a cautionary tale for the rest of the country.
In the meantime, read yourself some Chesterton and Kipling. You’ll thank me later.
Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!
Martin Simpson 