THE WAR WE THOUGHT WE WON IS IN SUDDEN-DEATH OVERTIME

It's hard to imagine saying anything important in just 600 words. But, then, Genesis did the whole creation in less....!

Thereby encouraged, here are 600 words on the most inexhaustible and inexorable law of life -- change. Change comes in all shapes, sizes and species. And yet many times we're as unaware of it as a butterfly cupped in our hand is that we have a spring cold. The cold we're experiencing right now promises to be epic, as we try to diagnose two opposite forces at work. Economic liberty and social planning.

The first (Capitalism) traces its history through such times as the Protestant Reformation, British Mercantilism, and Yankee free enterprise. It happily harnesses our primal passions for pursuit, profit and prominence. In some ways it scrapes down to the raw appetite of human greed. However its defined, it works. Capitalism has unleashed pent up personal ambitions that have built great industries, economies, nations and empires. From Adam Smith to Ayn Rand, its irrepressible energies have been esteemed and codified.

The second (Social Planning) has its roots in early Christian communities where sharing the wealth was also esteemed and codified. By modern times, these roots came to blossom in such diverse corners of the world as Anglo-American Utopian societies and Marxist-driven ideologies throughout Europe.

Six hundred words are hardly enough to span these centuries, but there are those who would say the late-20th-century Cold War between America and the USSR was the climax of the capitalism/planning clash. Having "won" that war, capitalism's historians saw the 21st century as the time when the victor's ideas converted the world.

But a funny thing happened on the way to global capitalism -- the great recession of 2009. The victory stalled, the dreams turned into nightmares. In the shambles of collapsed banks, businesses, and economies, we the victors are confronted with a peculiar twist in the game plan. Perhaps rather than a victory, it was a tie. And rather than easing into a new age of global capitalism, we're in sudden-death overtime.

The players in the program are no longer simplistically listed as the Free World and Communism. Now they include anyone and everyone with an economic opinion. For those who need to keep it simple, OK -- the White House vs Fox News. Hardly that simple, but simple sells in complex times.

If the butterfly were to take notice, it would realize the change raging through the body politic pits the bawdy history of capitalistic success vs the academic history of social planning. Capitalists (jot down: power brokers) defend what is, because what is is what has made them successful. A success which traditionally they hold out as the American Dream anyone can have. Social planners (jot down: liberal wings of both parties but especially the White House) argue that high-tech ingenuity has given social planning new tools whereas capitalism is still playing with old greed.

The pen of history is held in abeyance as the contest unfolds. But while the issues can be packaged in 600 words, the results will call for many more by the time our children someday read them.