Chesterton’s fence is easy to get over

Many people who I’ve talked to seem to think that Chesterton’s fence consists in a very strong presumption against changing institutions. Some praise it as the very symbol of their own strong attitude against changing institutions, and refer to any change in institutions as “tearing down Chesterton’s fences”; others condemn Chesterton’s fence as being an excessively strong constraint, arguing we should be readier to change institutions, and hence should abandon Chesterton’s fence.

Enough is enough. This blog post argues that Chesterton’s fence is actually a very weak constraint. I argue that this is how it was meant by Chesterton, and that it is not useful to interpret it in any other sense. This is partly a point in favor of the fence: if a reformer can’t even meet Chesterton’s very weak constraint, which is very easy to meet, then he’s a very poor reformer who hasn’t even done his very easy homework, and certainly shouldn’t be admitted to the rule of our society. But it also means that getting over Chesterton’s fence is not the be-all-end-all of whether you’ll allow someone to change your institutions; you need more defenses than Chesterton’s waist-high garden fence.

• G.K. Chesterton’s original text
• Chesterton only required a debunking origin story, and this is very easy to provide
• Examples of debunking origin stories
• Isn’t that the genetic fallacy?
• Against interpreting Chesterton’s fence in a stronger sense
• Conclusion

G.K. Chesterton’s original text

Chesterton’s fence is a parable that was given entirely in two paragraphs in his book “The Thing: Why I Am A Catholic”, in the chapter “The Drift from Domesticity”. In full, they run as follows:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion. We might even say that he is seeing things in a nightmare. This principle applies to a thousand things, to trifles as well as true institutions, to convention as well as to conviction. It was exactly the sort of person, like Joan of Arc, who did know why women wore skirts, who was most justified in not wearing one; it was exactly the sort of person, like St. Francis, who did sympathise with the feast and the fireside, who was most entitled to become a beggar on the open road. And when, in the general emancipation of modern society, the Duchess says she does not see why she shouldn’t play leapfrog, or the Dean declares that he sees no valid canonical reason why he should not stand on his head, we may say to these persons with patient benevolence: “Defer, therefore, the operation you contemplate until you have realised by ripe reflection what principle or prejudice you are violating. Then play leapfrog and stand on your head and the Lord be with you.”

Chesterton moves on from this to say that “among the traditions that are being thus attacked, not intelligently but most unintelligently, is the fundamental human creation called the Household or the Home”. Chesterton was a social conservative, and the fence was only introduced as a device to defend the family against leftist critiques. He had no broader, general theory of the fence beyond these two paragraphs, and he did not come back to it.

Chesterton’s fence, when stated as a “principle”, is sometimes summarized as, “Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.” As you can see from the full text above, this does capture Chesterton’s advice. What I intend to emphasize in this blog post is that it fully captures all of his advice.

Chesterton only required a debunking origin story, and this is very easy to provide

Chesterton’s fence, when stated like this, is a really easy constraint to get over. To get over Chesterton’s fence, the reformer who would like to abolish an institution F need only provide, and support, two claims:

1. The institution F was originally instituted with the intention of fulfilling the purpose P.
2. The purpose P is not a purpose that we currently need, or want, or should want, to fulfill anymore. (Or alternatively, P is already equally well or better fulfiflled by a different institution G, which has made F redundant; or, F does not fulfill P anymore.)

That’s it. I call those two claims together a “debunking origin story”: the claim 1 gives an origin story for the institution F, and the claim 2 uses that origin story to debunk F with respect to our current society.

Quick thinkers will already notice that it’s still possible that the institution F is a good institution even though it is possible for a critic of F to get over Chesterton’s fence when criticizing it, and that is my point: Chesterton’s fence is only a weak constraint. For slower thinkers, however, I will give a list of debunking origin stories for some presently-standing institutions, which will emphasize my point.

Examples of debunking origin stories

Here are 20 examples of still-existing institutions/policies that people sometimes condemn by pointing to “bad origins” (racism, eugenics, colonial violence, etc.). Although I did not put any care into collecting the list (and hence the examples ended up somewhat U.S.-centric), I personally endorse all of these arguments:

1. Minimum-wage laws — Critics point out that some Progressive Era advocates explicitly used eugenics / “unfit worker” arguments in support of wage floors.
2. Planned Parenthood / the early U.S. birth-control movement — Often condemned because Margaret Sanger embraced eugenics rhetoric (which Planned Parenthood itself acknowledges, while arguing the history is complicated).
3. Modern American policing — Frequently criticized as having roots in slave patrols and racialized social control (with some historians/commentators disputing how direct that lineage is).
4. The prison system + prison labor — Condemned because the 13th Amendment’s “punishment” exception and post–Civil War practices like convict leasing are seen as reconstituting coerced labor.
5. The U.S. Electoral College — Criticized as a constitutional compromise entangled with slavery-era power and representation (including incentives tied to enslaved populations).
6. The U.S. Senate filibuster — Often condemned for its long association with blocking civil-rights legislation (even when writers disagree about whether it originated that way).
7. Single-family zoning — Condemned for exclusionary roots tied to racial segregation and keeping certain groups out of neighborhoods.
8. Homeowners associations (HOAs) / deed restrictions (historical) — Criticized because many neighborhood governance structures grew alongside racially restrictive covenants and enforced segregation norms (even though those covenants are now unenforceable).
9. U.S. housing finance & underwriting institutions — Condemned due to the legacy of redlining and government-backed mortgage systems that excluded Black neighborhoods (even though explicit redlining was later outlawed).
10. Standardized testing (IQ tests, SAT/aptitude testing) — Criticized for eugenicist intellectual roots and early claims about racial hierarchy used to justify exclusion.
11. The “War on Drugs” policy apparatus — Condemned as structurally racialized, with critics citing both historical intent claims and racially disparate impacts in enforcement.
12. The U.S. Border Patrol / border enforcement institutions — Criticized as emerging from restrictionist eras and racialized immigration politics; critics describe “racist origins” in early 20th-century enforcement formation.
13. The modern U.S. visa/quota border-control framework (legacy of 1924) — Condemned because the Immigration Act of 1924 was strongly shaped by racial hierarchy and eugenics-influenced restrictionism, and it helped institutionalize modern border controls.
14. Vagrancy / loitering policing and related ordinances — Criticized as inheriting logic from Black Codes that criminalized idleness and constrained freedom after emancipation.
15. Major museums with colonial-era collections — Condemned because many collections were built through colonial conquest/looting, prompting restitution and repatriation disputes.
16. Elite universities with slavery ties — Condemned because many prominent schools benefited from enslavement, slave-trade wealth, or related institutions, and some now publish formal reports acknowledging it.
17. Land-grant universities (Morrill Act system) — Criticized as having been financed through expropriated Indigenous land, with ongoing debates about restitution and revenue.
18. Child welfare systems in Indigenous contexts — Condemned due to the legacy of state-sponsored family separation (e.g., federal Indian boarding schools) and continuing debates about removals and sovereignty.
19. Psychiatry’s diagnostic institutions (e.g., DSM tradition) — Criticized because the field historically pathologized homosexuality and used institutional power in ways now seen as abusive; advocates cite this to challenge current authority.
20. Columbus Day (and similar “heritage” civic holidays) — Condemned for celebrating a figure linked to colonization and Indigenous dispossession, which is why many jurisdictions have shifted to Indigenous Peoples’ Day while the federal observance still exists.

Notice that all of these criticisms, if true, successfully get over Chesterton’s fence: they claim that the institution F arose to fulfill a purpose P, and that the purpose P is not a purpose that we currently need, or want, or should want, to fulfill anymore. (Of course, they do need to be true, which is debatable, but this is beyond the scope of this blog post.)

I hope using a slew of claims that are very controversial in current politics helped you notice how weak of a constraint Chesterton’s fence is.

Isn’t that the genetic fallacy?

The genetic fallacy is when you criticize an argument because of the motivations of the person who argued it. So the criticisms above technically don’t commit the genetic fallacy in the usual sense. However, in the broader sense where having bad origins doesn’t mean something is itself bad, the criticisms in the list do commit the genetic fallacy if used by themselves, as the first and only criticism of the institutions.

But if a defender of each of these institutions had decided to appeal to Chesterton’s fence as a defense of the institutions, then the debunking origin story provided by the criticisms fully fulfills everything Chesterton asked for. Nothing more is needed to get past Chesterton’s challenge. Chesterton’s fence has been successfully gotten over by these critics, because they provided a debunking origin story, and Chesterton’s fence, as such, does not ask for anything more, or anything else.

Against interpreting Chesterton’s fence in a stronger sense

If someone says Chesterton did not mean what I said he meant, then such a person is certainly wrong and irrational, and not worth listening to, and should certainly be excluded from society; I will not say they should be killed, but certainly no one would miss them. But let us suppose a more reasonable opponent of my blog post. Such a reasonable opponent says:

Sure, I concede Chesterton meant what you said he meant, since I am reasonable, unlike an irrational and unlovable person who does not concede this. But I think you are making Chesterton’s fence into something useless and irrelevant, and hence I think we should use the name “Chesterton’s fence” to refer to the stronger principle that, if we wish to tear down an institution, we should find out what purpose it currently serves. After all, Chesterton’s fence is only relevant to the extent that the original purpose of an institution sheds some light on its current purpose, and that’s obviously what we should care about, so it is not even worth having a name for the other thing.

It is the nature of a reasonable opponent that, although he is reasonable, I oppose him. My reason is as follows: defenders of an institution can always make up an infinity of purposes that they think (or claim to think) the institution currently serves for them. It is not clear which of these deserve a hearing. Maybe you should just do your best to answer the best arguments against your view that you can think of, but then Chesterton’s fence is not distinct from the “principle of charity”, or “steel manning”; it is certainly not worth having a third name for an idea that already has two.

More to the point, Chesterton’s fence has Chesterton’s name on it, and Chesterton is a famous traditionalist conservative. It makes sense that Chesterton’s fence should refer to something that talks about deferring to tradition, and our forefathers, etc. Chesterton’s fence clearly ties into Burkean conservative defenses of tradition, such as the view of tradition that Ed Feser attributes to F.A. Hayek. An interpretation of Chesterton’s fence should honor its conservative and traditionalist roots.

Chesterton’s idea, as I reconstruct it, has to do with an intuition that when we actively or passively support the continued existence of an institution, we don’t only (or even necessarily) do so because we have our own reasoning to think it’s a good idea, but also (or sometimes even exclusively) because we trust the tradition of our society that has been maintaining the institution up to now. Our trust in our ancestors, in turn, is only as good as their trust in their ancestors, and so on, and the line of people trusting each other has to end at the people who first instituted the institution. Chesterton is saying that, even before you get to the merits of the discussion of an institution, you should be able to at least overcome our commonsense trust in our ancestors. And I add: if you can’t even do that, how good of a reformer can you be, exactly?

Conclusion

In summary, to recapitulate:

1. Chesterton’s fence only requires that you provide a debunking origin story of an institution that you seek to abolish: describe the original purpose of the institution, and show that that purpose is no longer a good reason for the institution.
2. This is what Chesterton meant by it.
3. This is what is interesting to mean by it, because (1) interpreting it as being about purposes currently served by an institution makes it too similar to charitableness/steelmanning, and (2) the debunking-origin-story interpretation also best captures Chesterton’s conservative and traditionalist worldview, and (3) a weak constraint is more interesting as a challenge to a reformer, because if a reformer can’t even meet a weak constraint, then he is certainly a bad reformer.

Illustration for this blog post, drawn by Nano Banana.