The Founders drew upon sources both ancient and modern, very much anticipating G. K. Chesterton’s later description of tradition as the “democracy of the dead” because it “refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” A gentleman — compleat or not — can be a conservative or a liberal, but he cannot be an anarchist, political or moral. It’s hard at times not to be sucked into an eddy of tastelessness, if only because of its ubiquity. As Chesterton — witty, prescient Chesterton — put it: “It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.” And being, as folks used to put it, “upright” is ever more difficult, and to many it even seems silly. I’ve lived in a part of eight decades now, and in my life I’ve known fewer than six individuals who had so mastered restraint that they could dependably keep a secret.