The powers that be wanted to lock up Innocent Smith or have him committed. After all, the protagonist of G.K. Chesterton's "Manalive" — who figured a rooftop the ideal spot for a picnic and bullets life-giving "pills" for pessimists — had been accused of burglary, polygamy, desertion, and attempted murder.

Investigators soon discovered, however, that as his name would suggest, Smith was innocent.

Smith broke into his own house; had a torrid love affair with his own wife; walked "round the world" only to develop a greater appreciation for his home; and provided a nihilistic depressive with a newfound desire to live by way of the cocked-hammer tactic Tyler Durden would later embrace in "Fight Club."

Smith ruffled feathers and risked imprisonment because he "distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments." His peers considered him to be an extremist because he was radically in the right.

Peachy Keenan, contributing editor to the American Mind whose throwbacks to Chesterton prompted mine, hasn't waved a six-shooter threateningly at ghoulish intellectuals or consumed meals on her rooftop — not to my knowledge, anyway. She is, nonetheless, like Smith, another radical from that creedal bunch, who understands that life is better following ten God-given rules than chasing the 10,000 fads presently held dear by today's powers and principalities, especially when those fads lead to misery and ruin.

In her must-read 2023 book, "Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War" — for which a paperback edition is forthcoming — Mrs. Keenan indicts the fads and conventions that have ailed the United States and other Western nations, then offers a prescription for a way to turn things around.

Much ink has been spilled in recent years elaborating on grandiose strategies for fixing the nation. There has been, for instance, talk of regime change in Washington, reining in big business on Wall Street, and a reconquest of the universities.

Mrs. Keenan, a former pro-choice atheist who is now the God-fearing matriarch of a large Catholic family, alternatively makes a strong case for a solution much closer to home.

In "Domestic Extremist," Mrs. Keenan catalogs everything that feminism and the corresponding -isms on the left have taken away from or suppressed in Americans, American women in particular. These include parental authority; child-bearing years and fertility; the maternal instinct; female virtues such as modesty and chastity; mental and spiritual well-being; and the natural complementarity between the sexes.

While the clock has sadly run out for multitudes of victims and useful idiots, Keenan stresses that not all alive today are condemned to a similar fate — especially not if they act now.

Her thesis, in a word, comes down to "domesticity"; as in, all Americans should fully embrace it and never let go.

There are strong indicators that domesticity is the way back to sanity and victory, not only because it served our forebears well enough for eons, but because of what evils can be directly linked to its suppression.

Mrs. Keenan notes with precision and biting humor precisely how feminism transformed countless female adherents into the Borg: dispirited, sterile, and interchangeable units of labor encouraged to suppress instinct, abort children, and ape supposedly masculine traits in pursuit of meaningless status and the benefit of their antihuman overseers; the noncommittal men happy to swipe right on the next conquest; employers spared from having an employee depart for maternity leave; and a fertility industry all too keen to bankrupt careerists who delayed child-rearing to live the "Sex and the City" lifestyle.

The victims at the outset appear predominantly to be those women who have rejected God and nature, but it's clear that everyone is ultimately affected, including the innumerable persons who will never be conceived and all those persons conceived who have been destroyed in Planned Parenthood's abattoirs.

"It's time to try something new, folks. And by new, I mean old," writes Keenan. "To fight back, some of us are going to have to reorient ourselves. Shift our mindsets. We're going to have to become ever so slightly more domestic."

For women specifically, this shift entails remaining "authentically female, as in, the timeless ways of being female: as a daughter, mother, and a wife. … It also means turning away from the diseased offerings of the elites, the media, Hollywood, your child's school, and Big Tech, and towards a more human lifestyle."

Mrs. Keenan reckons this natural, "organic" remedy will generate a social tsunami great enough to override the last ruinous waves of feminism, save our civilization from collapse, and thwart what Pope John Paul II elsewhere deemed the "culture of death."

In a brief exchange about "Domestic Extremist," Keenan told Blaze News, "The left had 100 years to accomplish their goals, and we just started fighting back recently."

While the title of the book might prompt some to imagine the pseudonymous mother lowering the armored plating onto her Killdozer, muttering something about un-governability, then taking tread to the gathering forces of darkness, Keenan, like Smith, has a "mostly peaceful" solution in mind.

Mrs. Kennan recommends having at least three kids, if physically able; marrying young, staying married, and remaining faithful; thwarting efforts by private and public forces to usurp your parental authority; and, should circumstances allow it, "Stay home with your babies as long as you can."

Winning is largely dependent upon more domestic extremists steeling that institution upon which all civilizations depend and every tyrant reviles — what Chesterton called the "triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child."

While ostensibly a defensive move in the short run, Mrs. Keenan makes expressly clear that the nuclear family is "radioactive to the Regime." A good offense often requires a great defense.

Once a domestic extremist has established her family such that it might register on the state's Geiger counters, Keenan told Blaze News that the best way to further harden your perimeter is "to flee government schools and do whatever it takes to ensure your kids keep their genders and minds intact from the brainwashing. And go to mass!"

"We must do our best to become more domestic than they could ever imagine. We must cling bitterly to our families, our men, our homes, our children, and our own identities," Keenan underscores in the book. "We will refuse to believe the Big Lies of feminism. We reclaim our children, and what we teach them. We will assert ownership and agency over our lives."

As any parent knows, battles can be won on the daily, but a victory in the broader war will require a multigenerational effort. Like Moses, most alive today will not enter the promised land. That doesn't mean there aren't some ways to expedite the process.

For those wishing to speed up the transition to extreme domesticity, Mrs. Keenan gives a nifty "shortcut": traditional religion.

"When you become a 'person of faith,' like I did years ago, you get to jump ahead of all the laborious steps involved in becoming extremely domestic," wrote Keenan.

In addition to arguing the "Ten Commandments pretty much sum up the rules for a happy life," Mrs. Keenan suggests religious orthodoxy helps inoculate children against "the most depraved ideas of mainstream culture."

Just as Mrs. Keenan manages to infiltrate heavy subject matter with humor, the book is also saturated with her own faith and hope. She appears genuinely convinced that breaking with disordered convention, keeping the commandments, and becoming a domestic extremist is a winning formula and that victory is all but guaranteed.

When pressed about her certainty, Mrs. Keenan told Blaze News, "Humans don't want to live in abject misery, although our leaders want us to. I have faith that we will, in the end, win bigly, but it may get much worse before we do. And if we don't, you still win if you get to heaven."

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