Progressive Lament

The concept of "progress" has been on my mind for a while now. It will probably stay there.

A 1934 Chicago Exhibition pennant from my great-grandmother's house announces "A Century of Progress." Even in the midst of a depression, Americans believed we were moving forward. With exploding deficits and global warming looming as the ultimate externalities from our consumeristic age, I now wonder if we are progressing to the edge of a cliff.

Post-modernists claim that we have moved past the idea of progress. But as with Mark Twain, the reports of modernism's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Our culture's demise may be the modern tragedy as we become morally and physically obese. The useful provision of new ideas replaced by gluttony and a disdain for tradition.

Tonight, I saw two images of progress. Lefty ranter Keith Olberman tossed softball questions to Candace Gingrich, a lesbian activist who is on TV because her half-brother's name is Newt. Keith and Candace tried to take some solace in a poll that suggested to them that Californians didn't really mean it with that crazy Prop 8---the democratic vote that reversed an activist court. Candace said repeatedly that gay marriage would come "with the passage of time": echoing the unstated idea of many that history is moving (progressing) towards some future enlightened liberal state. All we must do is leave the baggage of the past behind.

Straights jettison the fundamentals of marriage while the gays clamor to claim the name.

Flipping the channel to that bastion of conservatism PBS, I was greeted by a still picture of a sign reading "Tradition is the Enemy of Progress." The tradition was the Navajo culture and the progress was the American way of life being crammed down their throats.

Ultimately, the Marines discovered the military value of tradition. With their unique tongue indecipherable, Indian code talkers volunteered to defend a country that had tried to destroy the language. Their heroic work saved countless lives, even as they had to answer to "chief" rather than their given names.

Having obliterated cultures around the world with the internal combustion engine, McDonalds, and Britney Spears, we have unknowingly turned the sights to ourselves. The foundations of Western culture are under attack by the progress that it has created. Will we be able to see that the jack-hammer in our hands is pounding the thin floor beneath our feet? Or will we progress to a free fall.

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"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."
G. K. Chesterton


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