GREG J. writes:

I just read and enjoyed your post on manufacturing and the comments following. I was particularly intrigued by Art’s remark: “‘You can’t turn back the clock’ is an old cliché, but it has some truth to it. It is unfortunate that those who utter it don’t fully understand that it can be used to condemn their beliefs as well.”

I happen to be in the middle of reading an excellent book of social criticism by the poet and philosopher Donald Davidson, a member of the Fugitive/Agrarian group of thinkers and writers centered at Vanderbilt University in the 1930’s. In a 1957 book Still Rebels, Still Yankees, Davidson had this to say about the figure of the clock of history:

‘You cannot turn the clock back!’ is the commonest taunt of our day. It always emerges as the clinching argument that any modernist offers any traditionalist when the question is: ‘What shall we do now?’ But it is not really an argument. It is a taunt intended to discredit the traditionalist by stigmatizing him a traitor to an idea of progress that is assumed as utterly valid and generally accepted. The aim is, furthermore, to poison the traditionalist’s own mind and disturb his self-confidence by the insinuation that he is a laggard in the world’s great procession. His faith in an established good is made to seem nostalgic devotion to a mere phantom of the buried past. His opposition to the new—no matter how ill-advised, inartistic, destructive, or immoral that new may be—is defined as a quixotic defiance of the Inevitable. To use a term invented by Arnold J. Toynbee, he is an Archaist. By definition, he is therefore doomed.

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Gerry T. Neal writes: 

The saying “you can’t turn back the clock” has always amused me in that the illustration is not appropriate to convey the thought intended. It is quite easy to turn back most clocks and ever since governments introduced the folly of Daylight Savings Time, we all do so at least once a year in the fall. What the progressive, of course, means by “you can’t turn back the clock” is that time itself, and history, flow in only one direction. The purpose of the cliché is to discourage attempts to undo what “progress” has done in the past. 

This, however, brings to mind a different illustration. Imagine that a man is driving towards a particular destination and he reaches a fork in the road. He turns left, rather than right, and as he continues driving it eventually becomes clear that he has chosen the wrong path and is actually heading in the opposite direction of where he wishes to go. Does he keep on driving in the same direction or does he turn around and return to the fork where he went astray? It would be folly to apply the progressive’s maxim in these circumstances – especially if we add to the illustration the detail that the road he is currently on is heading towards a steep precipice, the bridge over which has been destroyed.

Laura writes:

Why don’t progressives, who believe civilization is advancing and who do not believe in the possibility of regression, come up with another expression? Is it because there really is nothing in physical existence that illustrates their concept of constant progress? They could say something like, “You can’t make an old man young again” or “you can’t make the tree into a seed.” These statements are true and make more sense than “you can’t turn back the clock.” But these expressions wouldn’t serve their meaning, which is that there is some unseen mechanical process at work that cannot be reversed, a process that has nothing to do with aging, ripening or decay.  

PDV writes:

A materialistic society is necessarily fatalistic. Man will not find a reflection of himself as a free and intelligent being in a nature conceived of as nothing more than a recycling of energy. The great mysteries of nature are conceived of as puzzles, himself – if he is consistent – merely a smallish, oddly homeless piece that would lay down with logs if they would have him, that would be a log if he knew how. As for forks in the road and missed turns, there’s something sick-making (to use an old Waughian term) about turning back. It contradicts everything! It throws everything into chaos. Why is one direction better than another? Because it happened. There was no other direction. Fatalism is essentially making the best of nothing. There is nothing except what happens. The barely concealed indignation of a certain congressman at demands that he should resign is perfectly understandable. A philosophical lawyer could make a good case for him as a victim of something that just happened. 

In this scheme of things coo-coo clocks are quaint reminders of divine humor.

Alissa writes:

The liberal view of civilization constantly advancing is a bit odd. Civilization in reality goes in cycles where there is rise, stability, decay, decline, fall, renewal and back to the step one. I’ve always joked that progressives are progressing towards destruction. An often erroneous assumption of progressives is how the past is equal to conservative when in reality a couple of major movements in the Western world from the 17th to the 20th century were liberal in their aim (French Revolution, Enlightment, etc). Since we are progressing and the past can’t be undone, we should be undoing the effects of liberal philosophy that were enshrined in the West, such as the belief in equality, democracy, individual rights or autonomy, human rights, reason and progress? Hey we’re in the 21st century, let’s change the tune and get rid of liberal ideals dear! They’re so old! 

Outside of the topic slightly but good news for the Catholic Church. 

Liberalism always tends to kill religion over time and hopefully the future will be a small but growing number of traditional conservatives in religion instead of the many liberals present which are dying off bit by bit. Currently the statistics are indicating that many Christian denominations are either declining or disappearing overtime and sections where theological conservatism is somewhat present are surviving.

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