A Good Turn of a Phrase

I read a good phrase the other day “History running backwards.” or something very similar. I’ve lost the author’s name, my apologies, but I like their idea.

America, with our Tea Parties, our Hancock Society, and our other angry political movements keeps looking to the past for a model for how to live. I like the idea of learning from the past but I don’t want to live there.

Do we really want to live in log houses and burn wood or worse (manure) to stay warm and cook our food? Do we want to ride horses? Even old cars that didn’t have roofs and were started with cranks don’t to hold much attraction in day-to-day life when we have GPS and highways. Why then do people want to go back to the bare constitution that the founding fathers wrote? Every law that has been added to our books has been added for a reason. If we turned back the clock today would our modern leaders give us two hundred years of comparative peace? Or would we find ourselves in another civil war within a few months or weeks? The way I see it, the people who want more state power don’t want power for me or you, they want it for themselves (I don’t trust them).

A few years ago I heard a joke about Utah politics…The Democrats can’t get past 1960 and the Republicans desperately want to go back to 1860. Here’s my suggestion. Let’s look toward the future because like it or not that is where we are going in our shiny air conditioned cars and our comfortable houses with electricity and indoor plumbing. Is that really such a bad thing?