Beware: Change Is Not Always Something You Should Believe In

Throughout history, generations have theorized that society’s ills can be cured by “change(s)” to society's foundations through government/political intervention. Our current President ran on a simple message of Hope and Change. He claimed that he would provide Change that people could truly believe in. Change is a funny word. One segment of the population views this word as a positive word connoting the casting off of ancient philosophy or thought and adoption of a new, innovative approach. Other members of the population view “change” as a threat to traditional prescriptions that have existed over time that have proven to provide predictable results. When is change a good thing? Is it proper for a man to claim he can bring about change that everyone can believe in?

Before you determine if “change” is beneficial, you must ask yourself if the status quo is in need of change. If the answer to this question is yes, you must consider if the change being advocated by the politician is in fact more beneficial than the status quo. I will concede that certain aspects of our health care, education and energy policies are in need of changes. However, change is in the eye of the beholder. Herein lies the problem with the “change” being preached to Americans by President Obama: He believes the “change” that is needed for our country is a complete reframing of the foundation for which our country operates. President Obama’s policies on cap and trade, socialized medicine, immigration reform, economic regulation and many other domestic and foreign policies exact a radical departure from traditional American policies. Many Americans are listening to President Obama’s utopian rhetoric regarding these policies without asking themselves if the results of these policies would in fact be more beneficial than the status quo. I hear people say that the health care system is broken and that anything would be better than what we have. Is that true? Is that why Canadians and Europeans come to the U.S. for important medical treatment rather than stay and wait for months or years for treatment from their government run hospitals and doctors? I understand that people easily forget that it can appear that “the grass is greener on the other side.” However, simply “hoping” or even “believing” that the grass is greener on the other side doesn’t mean it actually is greener.

The real question I have is whether President Obama’s drastic and sudden “change” he proposes is a change any of us should believe in? When I hear a man stand before me and tell me he has a vision for America that involves radical changes in the framework for which our society operates, I pause with suspicion and concern. History has proven that in almost every regard, beneficial change takes place slowly and through the unconscious actions of many individuals within a society; not at the hand of a single man with good intentions. The great statesman, Edmund Burke, pointed out that proper change comes as a consequence “of a need generally felt, not inspired by fine-spun abstractions. Our part is to patch and polish the old order of things, trying to discern the difference between a profound, slow, natural alteration and some infatuation of the hour.” Burke summarized his point by stating, “by and large, change is a process independent of conscious human endeavor, if it is beneficial change.” Men may use their reason to assist an adjustment of the old order of things to new things “if they are employed in a spirit of reverence, awake to their own fallibility.”

President Obama’s rhetoric regarding his policies paints a utopian picture of free, yet high-quality health care for all; complete energy independence through alternative energy sources while at the same time somehow keeping costs low to consumers; spending trillions on stimulus for infrastructure, education and other social programs with the promise such spending will have no ill effect on our economy and international standing in the future. President Obama’s rhetoric of “change” provides no possibility of the fallibility of his policies and is quick to pass judgment on the status quo without considering if his new policies would be any more effective than the status quo or result in any possible unintended consequences creating greater harm. For example, if President Obama wanted beneficial change for our health care system, he would analyze not only the deficiencies of the American health care system, but also the deficiencies under the socialized medicine programs instituted in Canada and UK (i.e. 4 month to 2 year waiting lists and rationed health care). Unfortunately, Pres. Obama is arrogantly relying upon his reason and vision as a means to fundamentally “change” America. By throwing aside the traditional policies and practices of society and altering the fabric of our American society, President Obama sets upon a dangerous course, as expressed by Burke:

“One of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and its laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave those that come after them a ruin instead of a habitation – and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with another. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”

Prudence, patience and a respect for the traditional social, economic and religious framework for which our country was founded and developed should be employed in seeking reform or “change” for the ills of our society. Burke said it best when he described beneficial reform: “the perceptive reformer combines an ability to reform with a disposition to preserve; THE MAN WHO LOVES CHANGE IS WHOLLY DISQUALIFIED, FROM HIS LUST, TO BE THE AGENT OF CHANGE.”