Change for the sake of change....

I've been reading Chesteron again, and what's worse I've been doing it late at night. Fuzzy brain and one of the great thinkers of the 20th century don't mix. But, when else is a busy mom of four going to get alone with a guy like him? As I muddle through the first few pages of Orthodoxy I can actually hear the synapses in my brain coming to life as light floods the dark, unused corners of my mind. No one talks like this guy anymore, except maybe Ravi Zacherias, whom I happen to adore. Ravi, if you ever read this, please adopt me!

As I read Orthodoxy, I feel as though I'm privy to the theologically-robust, culturally-aware conversations that Chesterton once shared with his colleaugues in a smoke-filled, leather-chaired study. Great tomes line the walls, as the men banter over the foolishness of Neitzsche or some other bombastic philosopher bent on killing God. And there in the corner I sit, silently hanging on every word, waiting for something great and profound to steal away back to the 21st century.

As it happens, I found such a morsel last night on page 28. I had just finished watching the latest presidential debate, where change seemed to be one candidate's mantra. And it got me thinking. Change isn't always necessarily good. Change a diaper, yes. Change the air pressure in the International Space Station, not so good. Change your underwear daily, absolutely. Change one amino acid on a chain of DNA, and look out. We ought not embrace change until we have all the facts. What exactly are we going to change and how are we going to go about it?

Chesterton, of course, says it far better than I ever could.

He writes, "It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. Sound familiar? If the change-worshipper wished to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the idea of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress. It is worth remark, in passing, that when Tennyson, in a wild and rather weak manner, welcomed the idea of infinite alteration in society, he instinctively took a metaphor which suggests an imprisoned tedium. He wrote------

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

"He thought of change itself as an unchangeable groove, and it is. Change is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can get into."

It seems, it times of trouble, that change is the only solution. And it may very well be. No sense in putting on the same pair of jeans if time and time again they make you look fat. But, we must not be swept off our feet, by charming change, if he has nothing more to offer than change itself. Nor should we be swift to change the foundational things which have made and contine to make America great. Capitalism, for all of its worts, still work a whole lot better than socialism, or her evil step-sister communism. Life is, the last time I checked, still preferable to death. Taxes, to folks like us who although we make a modest living probably won't be part of the blessed 95 %, should only be changed if the change involves a reduction.

See, I'm all for change as long as were talking about things like underwear, bloated beauracracy, out-of-cntrol pharmacutical companies, over-priced health insurance, government over-spending, protecting life from the uterus to the grave, putting an end to genetically-modified food, ending rediculous farm subsidies to monster companies like ConAgra, and so on and so forth.