Right after I graduated high school, I was on vacation with my family in North Carolina in June 2023 when I had the idea to start a publication for young conservatives. As I paced around our rented condo, I tried out names in my mind, and eventually settled on New Guard Press. My generation is the New Guard of the American experiment, and I wanted to build somewhere where my generation could answer the question “What does victory look like?”
In the three years since then, New Guard Press has published more than 50 young conservative writers from more than 20 colleges. Next month, however, we are launching a fellowship that will train and equip the next generation of future-minded, conservative writers to find their way in the broader media landscape.
Our mission was inspired, in part, by G.K. Chesterton’s famous line: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” New Guard Press was envisioned as an outlet where young conservatives could articulate a positive vision for the future of American culture, based on our shared loves instead of hatred for the left’s ideas.
I didn’t realize it then, but G.K. Chesterton passed away at his home in Beaconsfield, England, on June 14, 1936, exactly 87 years before I had the idea to start New Guard Press.
Chesterton is a notorious Catholic convert-maker, and I am one of his victims. I often joke that Chesterton made me Catholic whether I wanted to be or not. But religion wasn’t the only area in which Chesterton’s thought shaped me; Chesterton was one of the first political thinkers I encountered. I was a high school freshman in 2020, when the whole world seemed to go crazy. We all remember the mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and social distancing.
Around the same time, my father introduced me to Chesterton’s most famous book, Orthodoxy. As leftists burned down cities in “fiery but mostly peaceful” riots, Chesterton’s argument that “the modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad” made it all make sense.
In one of Chesterton’s most Chestertonian passages, he wrote, “The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good.” He argued that the shattering of the Christian consensus in the post-Reformation West let loose not merely the vices of Christianity, but “the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage.”
What were the Black Lives Matters-marches-turned-riots but a deep perversion of the Christian desire for justice? It was Christianity that taught the world that even the poor and oppressed have worth. It was Christianity that taught the world that it is unjust for the powerful to tyrannize the weak. It was Christianity that taught us that all men are brothers, regardless of race. Yet the left accepts the veneer of Christian morality but rejects the center from which these ideas flow — namely, God — and they are only left with the never-ending struggle for power.
Chesterton’s political thought is especially relevant for today’s conservative movement as my generation attempts to head in a new — yet very old — direction. Chesterton was a critic of the disenchanted, modern way of viewing the world. Chesterton rejected what he called “scientific fatalism,” which says that “the leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else.” Instead, he argued for a more enchanted view of the world where “the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet.” Chesterton’s view of the world begins with a sentiment of gratitude that acknowledges things do not have to be the way that they are, but a personal God chooses to make the leaves green because he delights in it.
This sentiment of gratitude and wonder is the basis of a healthy society. The ordinary things of life are the most extraordinary, and nature is not merely a blind force, but the artwork of a personal God who chooses to make the sunrise because he delights in it. The only proper response is to know, love, and serve that God. Our politics should flow from that.
G.K. Chesterton is primarily remembered for his apologetics and fiction, but people often forget that he was primarily a journalist. He ran his own newspaper, and in his long career, he wrote more than 4,000 columns and essays. That’s one column every single weekday for more than 15 years — and anyone who has read any of Chesterton’s work knows that he never wrote a dull sentence.
Next month, New Guard Press is launching the Chesterton Media Fellowship — shortly before the 90th anniversary of his death. We will select, train, and equip a group of young writers, and place their writing in newspapers and magazines around the country.
Our mission is to cultivate swordsmanship of the pen as we train the next generation of jolly journalists, whose vision for society flows from a Chestertonian spirit of gratitude and wonder.
