Josh @ 37 “What the modern liberal does not seem to realize is the incredible effort it takes just to maintain the modern world”
Chesterton said somewhere that liberals have the completely wrong idea that stasis is the natural state of the world, and that change can only happen through enormous effort by valiant visionaries like themselves. In fact the opposite is true. Conservatism requires tremendous hard work, and never truly succeeds. To try to salvage something from the inevitable erosion of Nature is very difficult.
I think the reason liberals think this way is because their idea of the natural world is basically lifeless and mechanical. It’s “the culture of death” projected onto the entire world. When they want an example of the world without their interfering ministrations, they think of something like a rock. “Look at that thing!” they say. “It just sits there. It never changes. It looked exactly the same a year ago, and it will look the same next year, unless we DO something.” So they set about pushing the rock over, or blowing it up, or whittling it down into little pieces, and think they’ve struck a blow for Progress. In fact, they’re not even right about the unchangeability of the rock, but their prescriptions become ludicrous when applied to the living world.
Anyone with a tiny patch of lawn or garden knows that just doing nothing results in rapid transformation of the area – weeds and trees plant themselves, insects and animals start chewing, diseases produce withering. Trying to keep the patch of land from transforming in this way, to keep it looking as clean is it did the day I turned over the soil with a rototiller or cut the grass with a lawnmower – CONSERVING it in one state – requires constant labour and attention. In fact, it’s pretty much impossible; the forces against me are just too strong. But I do my best, and by the end of the year I still have something that looks tolerably like a garden.
In the same way, trying to conserve artifacts from the past, be they art works, buildings or institutions, requires constant activity. Liberals bust up these things and think they’re shaking off the dull weight of stasis and striking a blow for independence and originality; in fact they’re just riding along on top of the wave of natural destruction that claims everything if not opposed.
