Posted on March 19, 2008

by

Daniel Clark

Like Bill Clinton before him, Barack Obama is waging a campaign of "change" -- a buzzword whose meaning he's never been forced to explain. That's because the word itself resonates with his liberal supporters, who see virtue in the image of themselves as "agents of change." They portray conservatives, by contrast, as "defenders of the status quo."

To be sure, there are particular changes that conservatives do fear. Creeping socialism, moral relativism, and the dissolution of the nuclear family are just a few examples. That only stands to reason, because it would take someone completely devoid of values to welcome all changes indiscriminately. If there's anyone who fears and hates the very concept of change, however, it is those on the political left.

The most obvious manifestation of this lies in the area of environmentalism, where the main concern in recent years has been "climate change." Despite the fact that the climate has changed constantly throughout history, liberals are convinced that the earth is at its optimal temperature right now, a determination they feel free to make, as self-appointed managers of the ecosystem. Thus they are determined to thwart any further changes, regardless of what hardships their efforts impose everyone else.

Other natural processes they want to ban include extinction, erosion, and the introduction of invasive species. Not that liberals are arrogant, mind you; it's just that they've taken it upon themselves to assign geographic boundaries to all of creation. Perhaps we should be grateful that they allow the earth to continue orbiting the sun.

Their view of economics is not much different. To this day, the Industrial Revolution remains an object of liberal scorn. They still condemn the assembly line as dehumanizing, but now also bemoan the replacement of assembly line workers with machines.

Whenever unemployment rises, you can count on liberals to demand a stop to corporate downsizing. Of course, if corporations couldn't downsize, they'd never take a chance on expanding in the first place. That's okay, though, because liberals regard growing, successful corporations as menaces to society, just as they do shrinking, failing ones. Changes in either direction are equally worthy of their contempt.

If liberals had gotten their way, they'd have held back progress in order to save the jobs of the ice man and the blacksmith. Don't believe it? Just look at the way they decry the loss of neighborhood "mom and pop" stores. Their enemies in this case are the large retail and supermarket chains, which shoppers find more convenient than going to separate, specialized stores scattered around town. To consumers -- many of them moms and pops themselves -- this change has undoubtedly been one for the better, but liberals lament it all the same.

The whole Marxist foundation of liberal economic policy contends that society is divided into distinct and static economic classes, which the Democrats try to enforce through government activism. The progressive income tax, among other measures, aims to entrench these divisions by punishing upwardly mobility. Far be it for mere citizens to violate those class separations by climbing the economic ladder. Liberals' message to the so-called "middle class" and "working class" is clear: This is your lot in life. Get used to it.

When it comes to foreign policy, liberals resist change, even if the current situation is intolerable. During the Cold War, they fought to preserve the doctrine of "mutually assured destruction," by which the only thing preventing the Soviets from vaporizing us was their fear that we'd do the same to them. The Democrats opposed Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative -- which had the potential to render long-range ballistic missiles obsolete -- preferring instead to remain in a precarious standoff with an immoral and powerful aggressor.

In recent years, they've warned us against destabilizing the Middle East, despite the fact that the only thing stable about it is its constant state of insanity. We're no more capable of destabilizing that part of the world than we are of burning ashes, but liberals don't want us to pursue our terrorist enemies there, for fear that we might disturb the usual pattern of bloodshed.

Seeing themselves as the agents of change, liberals cannot abide those changes which are not of their own doing. They have an especially difficult time accepting changes that suggest the existence of a higher power than themselves. Once they have assumed responsibility for everything from wealth distribution to the temperature of the earth, the last thing they need is to have some meddlesome Supreme Being hanging around.

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