One of the interesting things we have learned from the decoding of our DNA is that we have genes specifically assigned to kill us. The very same genetic structures that have enabled us to rise above the primordial slime also numbers our days. We can explain this from a theological perspective as God's way of telling us who is in charge or from a Darwinian perspective as how every species is kept from outgrowing its food supply and thereby eating itself into extinction. The bottom line is that we are all born to die in the short run so that the species can live in the long.
Beyond just scientific facts, this information can be seen as a metaphor for the survival of nations. As our DNA forces the human race to constantly be reborn, so nations that survive long-term have inner mechanisms that force it to renew its sense of self. Nations that lack such a mechanism - the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, for example - are doomed to an early death. They are doomed because every internal criticism is considered to be an enemy of the state. Rightly understood, it is precisely this inner criticism that enables a state to evolve beyond any given point in history and so continue.
It is, therefore, to the credit of our Founders that, of all the elements in our Constitution, they had the humility and wisdom to include a provision for amendment. The democracy we have today flourishes as much because of that provision as any of the other elements of our form of government. Without that provision for inner criticism and change we would still be locked into a nation part free and part enslaved, no one-man-one-vote and women would be subordinate to men, to name only a few of the changes we have made in the structure of our nation. For proof of this one has only to ask, "Does anyone want to roll back the clock to the 18th Century?"
And it is the liberal mindset that is the instrument of this change! Conservatism counsels us to keep on doing as we have in the past...to not change...to look to the past for how to live in the future. The liberal mindset goads us into exploring the possibility that we can do better...to advance...that nothing in the past should trump the possibilities of the future! Those who attack liberalism are those who are attacking the very means by which our society is renewed and reinvigorated. They, as someone once said, 'Stand astride history and yell, STOP!"
We might not always like what the liberals tells us, as they challenge our complacency and illusion of self-satisfaction any more than we like seeing the undertaker coming up the walk, but both are essential to the survival of our selves as a species and of our society over the long sweep of history.
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