Friday, July 18, 2008

Are the Good Times Really Over?


Of all of the presidential contenders' slogans this year, B. Obama's have been the most interesting. His campaign creed is: "Yes, we can." To which any reasonable person would ask: "Can what?" The answer, of course, is "Hope." But again, a reasonable person might ask: "Hope for what?" To which the answer confidently comes back from the BO campaign: "For change." Indeed Obama's signs say: "Change We Can Believe In," as opposed, one supposes, to the unbelievable changes. But the elementary problem with this - which any student of logic might raise - is that change can be for the better or for worse.


Democrats in general, I would submit, confuse change with improvement. They fail to weigh the costs and benefits of change, to consider its unintended consequences, or to worry about what we need to conserve and how we might go about doing that faithfully. They ask Americans to embrace change for its own sake, in the faith that history is governed by a law of progress, which guarantees that changes is almost always an improvement. The ability to bring about historical change, then, becomes the highest mark of the liberal leader.


Utterly missing in this election season is a serious focus on limited or constitutional government.
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