A modern GPT-retelling of The Refusal of Reciprocity by GK Chesterton

For the Prussian begins all his culture by that act which is the destruction of all creative thought and constructive action. He breaks that mirror in the mind, in which a man can see the face of his friend or foe.

The Children of Tuesday

There are many ways of being lawless, and most of them at least make sense. A pirate plunders, but he does not expect the Navy to plunder for him. A thief sneers at property, but he does not howl robbery when his purse is cut. Even the hypocrite, that most despised of villains, still pays morality the backhanded compliment of pretending it exists. His failure is not that he denies the rule, but that he cannot keep it. But we face a newer and stranger barbarism — one that makes hypocrisy look like honesty.

This new barbarian does not merely break rules; he abolishes them, and then appeals to them. He insists that contracts bind his neighbor in iron chains, while binding him in spiderwebs that can be brushed aside at breakfast. He is outraged if you strike him, jubilant if he strikes you, and insists in both cases that the universe has conspired against him. He plays chess on the condition that his knight may move wherever he pleases, and shrieks when your bishop dares to do the same. In his eyes, reciprocity is not a principle, but a prank.

And what shall we call such a creature? “Hypocrite” is too small, for he is more consistent than that. “Tyrant” is too noble, for he lacks the dignity of coherence. His true name must come from his own habits. For he is a man who swears fidelity on Monday and forgets it on Tuesday, who treats yesterday’s vow as today’s inconvenience. He is not a citizen but a schoolboy, caught cheating at marbles, whose only defense is the eternal refrain: “But I want to.” He is, in short, one of the Children of Tuesday.

The Children of Tuesday are discoverers of a new gastronomy. For centuries it has been proverbially known that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Even savages understood that two birds roasted in the same pan must share the same seasoning. But the Children of Tuesday boast of a miraculous recipe: a sauce which scalds only the goose and sweetens only the gander — provided, of course, that the gander is theirs. When they lose an election, it is fraud; when they win, it is destiny. When they are accused, it is tyranny; when they accuse, it is justice. When law shackles them, it is oppression; when law shackles others, it is order. They do not merely violate reciprocity; they have murdered it, buried it, and then accused their neighbor of grave-robbing.

And yet, when he waves the flag, he believes himself sincere. He does not know that the flag no longer waves for all, that it now flutters only for those like him. He imagines he is defending a republic, while in truth he is dissolving the very pact that makes a republic possible: the pact that I will abide by the rules because you must abide by them too. And without that reflection, the citizen reverts to the tribesman, and the republic collapses into the raid once more.

Consider, too, their notion of honor. Their honor is the same word as ours, yet it may be as different as a shadow from the thing that casts it. In older days, men sought a strange equality even in bloodshed. The duel was a ghastly but splendid game: one man steps forward, the other steps back; each parries and strikes, not merely to hurt but to prove that the other man is also hurtable. It was a curious miracle that in striking, one might also be struck; that in seeking glory, one acknowledged the right of the opponent to seek it too. The duel was a sort of moral seesaw, in which each man bore the other’s weight as carefully as his own.

The Children of Tuesday, however, cannot imagine such absurd justice. They have invented a duel of a different kind: they carry swords, press cucumbers into their opponent’s hands, and then weep at the inhumanity of being scratched. A moment later they lunge with steel and call it bravery. They are martyrs when wounded, conquerors when victorious, and in both cases martyrs again. They have turned honor from a covenant into a cudgel, from equality into prestige.

For what the Children of Tuesday have lost is not merely fairness, but imagination. They cannot picture themselves as the other man. They cannot conceive that rules bind both players, or that war risks both wounds. They cannot see that the flag covers the whole crowd, not merely their own corner of it. In short: he breaks that mirror in the mind, in which a man can see the face of his friend or foe.

And once the mirror is shattered, everything else is simple — atrociously simple. Their creed, their politics, their patriotism, and their very faith collapse into the same childish cry: “But I want to.”

Thus the Children of Tuesday stand revealed — men who keep promises only until breakfast, who demand laws only for others, and who turn the noble inheritance of citizenship into the petty tantrum of the nursery.