Beat to the punch

Arriving to Chicago O'Hare hours early, I read through that Hitchens' article while sitting at my gate. All sorts of conservative bigwigs have ruminated over that particular passage (and many many others):

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!

What to make of it, indeed. He is bemoaning the growing prominence of Enlightenment rationalism (as seen through economics) that measures everything via the pound. Now some things should be measured that way, the price of bread for instance, but religion, family life, the integrity of historical communities and age-old customs and traditions that have lasted the test of time (though they may not last the test of today's market)? Nay, nay. If you absolutize market ways of thinking and acting and spread them to social relationships as well, you lose (as he says) loyalty, submission (to betters), obedience, and "exalted freedom" (that which takes into account the needs outside the individual). Hence those great turns of phrase, "the unbought grace of life" and "the cheap defense of nations" (note the adjectives -- those things beyond the wallet) thrill us still, because we seek to be more than just a consumer in the grocery checkout line.