The Great Law of Change

Edmund Burke once said: "We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature." But "America has never settled whether its governing form of reason is one of radical abstraction or humility and gradualism." Read The New York Times, Two Theories of Change.

"Today, if you look around American politics you see self-described conservative radicals who seek to sweep away 100 years of history and return government to its preindustrial role. You see self-confident Democratic technocrats who have tremendous faith in the power of government officials to use reason to control and reorganize complex systems. You see polemicists of the left and right practicing a highly abstract and ideological Jacobin style of politics.

The children of the British Enlightenment are in retreat. Yet there is the stubborn fact of human nature. The Scots were right, and the French were wrong. And out of that truth grows a style of change, a style that emphasizes modesty, gradualism and balance."

The editorial is about a "superb dissertation by Yuval Levin at the University of Chicago called The Great Law of Change." (If anyone has a link, let me know by leaving a comment.)