New contributor

Greetings Friends of Chesterton, Kyro Lantsberger here. It looks like I am going to be a new "face" around here. Eric was looking for some other people to contribute, and found me. Ive written for Gilbert and a couple other Catholic publications here and there. I have the following words to say in introduction......My dad traveled the world with the Red Cross, picked out my name in Greece, and decided to make it my problem ever since. I grew up on a family farm in South Dakota, and have ambled about the face of the Earth ever after. Im a US Army veteran of Bosnia (2000) and Iraq (2003). My branch was PSYOP, psychological operations, which is the propaganda/information warfare branch of the Army. I feel honored to have served with the people I did, and am humbled by some of the mentoring extended to me as I developed into an NCO. Some of my other interests include history, weapons, martial arts, and fitness.

on the other hand........I am really not a militaristic person at all.

I love fine wine and dark beer. I listen to classical music and study classical paintings-- want to start a pre-raphaelite collection. I strum my never quite in tune guitar whenever I get a chance. Im married with 2 children, boy -5, girl -2. I also have a lifelong love of books and reading.

All of these things seem to have led me to discovering Chesterton. I grew up in a Catholic home, and was fairly well versed in apologetics, but for the most part, I swallowed the worldview that my college education (indoctrination) promoted. Looking back, I see it as an issue of pressure and authority. The worldview promoted on campus, essentially leftist, is presented as the only view which could possibly be held by educated, enlightened people. It was during my deployment to Bosnia that I really could no longer justify my professor's teachings with what I saw with my own two eyes. Their expanations and aphorisms proved only to be ridiculous when faced with a real world situation of this magnitude. This led me to deeply questioning EVERYTHING, and essentially starting over intellectually, discovering Plato and the classical philosophers, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and the scholastics. I discovered modern thinkers whom I had never encountered before; Dietrich von Hildebrant, Josef Pieper, Jacques Maritan and......G. K. Chesterton. I extend that sense of humility, awe, and gratitude which I mentioned before regarding my unit members to these great thinkers. I am truly both baffled and angered when I think that all of these great thinkers must be sought out. The educational process in both secular and religious institutions has expunged all of these names.

Chesterton's thoughts were the keys to many locks which I had been looking for through many years without knowing it. I often had the feeling in certain situations that something didnt sound quite right, that there was something lacking in an idea, whether in politics, art, or religion. Chesteron's lively insight, and wonderous freshness put words to that funny feeling for me.

I hope you appreciate my thoughts here. I will try to find interesting and original things to share.