Getting to Second Base (Not What You Heathens Think)

I'm a traditionalist, conservative by nature. I don't care for change. Yet this doesn't mean that I cannot adapt, that I am incapable of accepting new ideas.

Take baseball, for instance. I love it. Greatest game ever, hands down, absolutely no doubt about it. But I do like that the game has instituted a pitch clock. Things were simply taking too long and something had to be done. Similarly, I like the ban on defensive shifts. It makes the participants be athletic and make plays rather than automatons instructed to do this or that. 

See? I'm open to change.

What I don't like however is placing a runner on second base at the start of extra innings. That, bluntly put, strikes too much at the essence of the game. You're supposed to have to put men on base in order to score, not give them a head start of half way around the diamond. That's a tradition I will fight for. You don't alter the basic point of anything in the name of making it better. Period.

And this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my Detroit Tigers lost last night because of the rule. Not one iota.

Well, all right, maybe a little. But my point still stands.

Long live orthodoxy

Embracing change is easy. Embracing Orthodoxy is the real challenge.

-a paraphrase of Mr. G. K. Chesterton

We hear it all the time, don't we, fellow conservatives? We hear the importance of embracing change, of being willing to change, of the need to alter our beliefs and desires to the will and whim of the current society. That's all we need to do is embrace the change which the modern society wishes us to do.

If they meant for us to change in the sense of becoming truly better persons, of changing from bad habit to good, of learning to like what we ought and dislike what we ought as well, of becoming more truly and usefully charitable and kind, there would be no problem. But they don't mean that. They mean, 'accept our ways of thinking and acting'. Or, more precisely, accept the change we want imposed on you.

But the trouble with accepting change merely because it's change, merely because it is what modern society may want rather than what may really help both the individual and the world at large, is that it will leave us we know not where. For accepting it is simple. Do nothing, reflect on nothing, question nothing, and change will occur. There's no effort involved.

Yet embracing Orthodoxy, and we capitalize it on purpose, accepting and living by proper traditions, now that's the challenge. That's where we grow and nurture our selves and our souls. That's how we create better people and a better world. By living right according to the just precepts which have been with us since the dawn of time. Change is all right, yes, if done to that purpose.

Otherwise, it will happen anyway. But would you rather do what you can to control change, or merely be stuck in its tight and unwieldy (and worldly) groove, as Mr. Chesterton also suggests? For you will lose control of yourself by merely agreeing to eternally change. Yet tradition works. That's how it became traditional in the first place.