Change Is Bad, M'Kay?

Roger Kimball has an excellent post up at Armavirmuque today about John Stuart Mill and the triumph of innovation in social and moral life at the expense of convention.

Needless to say, I'm not much of a Millsian. But that doesn't mean I think innovation is per se bad. Rather, it strikes me that a healthy society really needs two sources of energy - those pushing ideas that are claimed to be "new and improved" and those who subject such ideas to rigorous question and scrutiny based on that society's standards, traditions and values. Between them, these forces ought to act in a way to separate the Columbuses of the world from the Marxes.

In other words, I may be a curmugeon, but in the end I'm only looking out for you.