I thought conservatives would know some history.

[catsittingstill]

I've been staying at my Dad's house over the holidays.  This exposes me to reading material I wouldn't ordinarily see, like the Wall Street Journal.  Reading the Wall Street Journal is a valuable reminder of why I generally don't.  For example there is this piece by David Horowitz.

The part that caught my eye was this:

"My life experience had led me to conclude that not only was changing the world an impossible dream,..."

Changing the world is an impossible dream.  This is apparently so well accepted by his conservative audience he doesn't even need to mention why he thinks so, he just tosses it off on the way to something else. 

Changing the world is an impossible dream.

Thomas Jefferson, Fredrick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King will be devastated to hear that.  John Snow, Louis Pasteur, Edwin Chadwick and Margaret Sanger will grieve over their wasted lives.  Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase; John Dalton and Antoine Lavoisier; Wilhelm Rontgen and Marie Curie, have not advanced human understanding one iota.  Henry Ford, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and Bill Gates have not changed one single thing about the world we live in.

Except, there was a time, not that long ago, actually, when slavery was an accepted fact, women were effectively owned by their male relatives, more than half of all people died before they turned ten, and nobody had the faintest idea why the sun came back in the morning. 

Changing the world is not just possible; changing the world is inevitable.

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Supposing the author only meant that he *used to* think changing the world was an impossible dream but had since changed his mind, I'm still puzzled how anyone who knew the first thing about history would make that mistake in the first place. Even a cursory glance shows world has changed pretty drastically over the course of known history, and sometimes very fast. I didn't even start on a list of great conquerors, for example.

As far as "changing the world", I think that the rest of the paragraph from which you draw the quote explains why he was hesitant about it -- because he was able to name at least two great movements that set out to "change the world" which led to great evil.


If what the writer meant was "trying to change the world sometimes works out badly" I would have to agree--indeed the point borders on the trivial. However that concept is not clearly expressed by "Changing the world is an impossible dream." The concept "it is impossible to change the world" *is* clearly expressed by "Changing the world is an impossible dream." Hence my confusion.

While I agree that some of the people on my list changed the world without particularly setting out to do so, I'm pretty sure the five randwolf picked did it very much on purpose.

And even supposing that it was *only* possible to change the world without setting out to do so (supposing that is your point) it still disproves the idea that changing the world might be an impossible dream.

Indeed we get into the issue of whether it is even possible to *not* change the world as a result of living in it. My own belief is that any choice we make, including the choice to follow the easiest way, affects the world around us, and there are six billion of us, so those choices agreggate to make big changes. Under the circumstances, I think choosing the changes you make, as best you can, is a good idea. Like, as I put it elsewhere, driving a bulldozer; you might as well not drive it blindfolded.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I think I hear the sound of six billion butterfly wings flapping.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

And it makes quite a roar.