A while back I had some unwelcome guests in my home. Squirrels had managed to chew a hole in the fascia of my house and find their way into the attic. The weather being cold, and the fascia being high, I procrastinated over making the necessary repairs. The varmints had already done the damage, and gained entry to my attic… I supposed eviction and “changing the locks” could be done at my leisure. That proved to be a foolish notion.
Something I later learned is that squirrels don’t just chew to gain access, they chew to sharpen and shorten their quickly growing teeth. They chew to explore and find food. They chew to provide themselves comfortable nests. Sometimes they chew for no apparent reason at all. Squirrels chew because that is what squirrels do. They are creatures that not only chew to live, more essentially they seem to live to chew. They probably don’t do much thinking about it, their brains are very small, they’re hardwired to chew on things… wood, plastic, insulation, electrical wires… they never stop. As long as they are squirrels, they chew. That’s not really something you want going on in your attic.
Integral to the progressive mindset is the idea of change. “Progress”, after all, cannot be made without change. In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with that; everyone wants progress. The problem comes when change becomes the end rather than the means. The old adage of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” becomes in the progressive mindset “If it ain’t broke, break it so we can fix it.” Progressives tend to have savior complexes, and can’t envision a world where people don’t desire, and don’t require, their assistance, monitoring, intervention, or control. Like the squirrel who lives to chew, the progressive lives to change things; even generally functioning things, since they are quite certain that none who have gone before are as brilliant as they are. The effect of the progressive obsession is often the same as the squirrel’s, a destructive mess.
And so we have the flailing failure of an attempt to totally transform the entire healthcare system of the United States. One sixth of the largest economy in the free world, that’s a little like trying to change the tire on a speeding tractor trailer, it won’t end well. Our system was hardly perfect, but it was at least functional; in many ways it was arguably the most functional in the world. I fear we may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Tweaks and incremental changes, one step at a time, cautious modifications; that would have been wisdom with something so critical to so many Americans, but we have chosen a chainsaw to perform a tonsillectomy.
Having failed so miserably in the implementation of their Affordable Care Act, you would have expected the Democrats to spend most of their efforts to try to fix the damage done. A few have, mostly those up for re-election and some who lean a little more conservative; but to expect a progressive to exercise restraint and caution, even in the face of disaster, is a little like expecting a squirrel to stop chewing holes. No, Harry Reid decides, let’s go for that “Nuclear Option” thing and throw out the centuries old senate rule on invoking cloture for presidential appointments. The President thinks that’s a great idea; at least he does now that he’s in charge, though he was firmly against it during the Bush years. Move on to Iran, Neville Chamberlain… oh, I mean John Kerry, has changed our tactics for how to deal with their nuclear ambitions. In both of these instances, the word “nuclear” ought to invoke caution and deliberation, but caution and deliberation seem continually to take a back seat to “hope and change” in the Obama administration, regardless of the potential consequences.
IMHO: We do not live in Paradise. Everything cannot be “fixed”. Our reach will always exceed our grasp, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for something better, that is how we make true progress. When we insist that a lack of perfection cannot be tolerated, we may change things blindly without properly assessing the consequences of our actions in our zealous pursuit of change. When there are total institutional meltdowns or travesties, drastic measures might be justified, but our society is a complex collection of ideas, methods, and institutions that to a great extent actually work relatively well without our tinkering. It’s not that things can’t be tuned up, juiced up, or cranked up to work that much better; but when someone comes into power proclaiming a fundamental transformation of the nation, well, sometimes that just means you have squirrels in the attic.
