What does 'change' really mean?
September 12, 2008| By David Talbot
"Change" is a vague term, nearly a nonsense word, because of how candidates use it today, Professor Wilfred McClay said Thursday at The Heritage Foundation.
But it makes a handy political slogan, he said, because many people don't ask the important questions: Change what? To what? Why?
McClay, who teaches at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, lectured at Heritage about some of the abstract words – change, promise, and experiment – used in today's political campaigns.
To help understand what change means in this election, we must pay attention to how it and other key words were used in older days, McClay explained.
As a political theme, "change" is not new: it has roots in early 20th Century American Progressivism. American Progressives spoke about change and promise as though our country were on an "open-ended, utopian journey," he said.
This Progressive idea of change was a rejection of the Founders' more limited notion of change, which was rooted in defined, concrete terms. Instead of advocating open-ended change, spoke about practical experiments, like having a written constitution, with defined terms and specific goals.
You can access the video and audio from this talk here.
