Obama's Philosophy Of Change Means The Death Of America As We Have Known It
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There is a good analysis of what philosophical change actually means over at the American Thinker. Previous conceptions of change have argued that identity can be maintained through the process of change. A modern view of change implies that the thing in question going through the change ceases to exist and is “fundamentally transformed” into something different. This may well be what President Obama meant when he campaigned on transforming America.
From Jack Kerwick:
“Change” is a concept with a storied history in the annals of Western philosophy. In fact, it is no exaggeration to account for Western philosophy itself as an enduring conflict over the nature of change and its place in the world. From its inception in ancient Greece 2600 years ago to the present day, philosophers have realized that inquiries regarding change are inseparable from those concerning permanence, identity, knowledge, belief, particulars, universals, and, in short, a plethora of other philosophical concepts.
The pre-Socratic philosophers set the stage for the issues that would arrest the attention of their successors for the next two-and-a-half millennia. Parmenides thought that change must be an illusion, for change is identity-extinguishing: if change were real, than neither the objects that constitute our world nor our knowledge of them would be possible. Heraclitus, on the other hand, thought that it was permanence that was illusory: it was he who famously said that “you can’t step in the same river twice.” Another partisan of “the flux,” Cratylus, grabbed hold of the logic of this reasoning and ran with it further: if change is the only constant, so to speak, then you can’t step in the same river even once, for nothing remains itself from one unit of time to the next. Thus, nothing can be known…However, to paraphrase the twentieth century philosopher Michael Oakeshott, change that promises fundamental transformation is emblematic of death. Every change involves loss, it is true, but dramatic changes of this kind are designed to destroy the being upon whom they are visited. It is crucial that this is grasped. When Obama pledges to fundamentally transform the United States, he is not pledging to improve upon his country, but to replace it with another entity altogether.
This is what a “transformation” involves. It is but a euphemism for death, really. Anyone with any doubts on this score ought to ask himself how his wife would respond to him if, in addition to vowing to love and cherish her, he as well vowed to fundamentally transform her? The desire to fundamentally transform one’s wife is nothing more or less than the desire for a new wife.
Similarly, the desire to fundamentally transform a country is the desire for a new country.
If President Obama is re-elected in 2012, even with a Republican controlled House and Senate, we may very well witness the death of America.
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