Chaos Theory deals with nonlinear things that no matter how much we want to believe we can, are effectively impossible to predict or control. The weather, the stock market, and Donald Trump becoming a contender for the GOP presidential nomination are all examples of the randomness and infinite complexity of nature.

One aspect of Chaos Theory is evidenced in something called the Butterfly Effect. You have no doubt heard of this proposition. The Fractal Foundation describes the Butterfly Effect as the effect granting “the power to cause a hurricane in China to a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened. A more rigorous way to express this is that small changes in the initial conditions lead to drastic changes in the results. Our lives are an ongoing demonstration of this principle.”

The proposition contained in the Butterfly Effect is that everything is related, all actions are based on waves in the space/time continuum created by other actions. While it is logically impossible to definitively prove that a specific butterfly flapping its wings at a specific time in as specific part of the deepest jungles of Vietnam created Typhoon Patricia and caused it to hit Mexico exactly where it did, it is not improbable to consider such a connection exists in the infinite complexity of the global ecosystem.

As noted in the definition of the Butterfly Effect, it has another name – it is called life.

As infinitely impossible as it is to predict every causal event from the flap of a wing to a typhoon a half a world away, this is exactly what the ideology of progressivism teaches humans can do. Following progressive “logic”, they believe that if the can control every life event within a tight enough range, they can work backwards, find that butterfly, seal it in a Mason jar and by doing so, stop the typhoon from ever occurring.

Chasing down all the supposedly causal events necessarily results in ever more increasing levels of control. If you believe in the Butterfly Effect model of governance, you must regulate everything because everything is related. It does not matter that you cannot prove a causal connection because under this theory, correlation is also causation. While in this mindset, a word is equal to actual harm. Expressing a desire for smaller government and lower taxes means that you are a racist and hate black people because government provides programs a percentage of black people depend upon. A mentally ill person shoots up a college campus means that all gun owners are dangerous and all guns must be confiscated.

By turning the self-evident truth that all men are CREATED equal on its head by believing that all men can be MADE equal once they are created, progressives in America have followed Alice down the rabbit hole to Wonderland.

Understanding chaos does not imply the ability to control chaos. Understanding the general tendency of winds and waves does not mean that we can predict where a particular wave will deposit a particular grain of sand on a particular beach, nor does not preclude the possibility of being blown off course by a storm – but we can adapt high level tools to help us avoid maelstroms, shoals and reefs and successfully navigate the oceans.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are such a navigational tool for liberty. Long before Benoit Mandelbrot considered his first fractal, the intuitions of men like Jefferson, Adams and Madison were crafting a government that recognized the impossibility of infinite levels of control. In life, they reasoned, the randomness is best managed by an individual operation within a high level framework that gave them the best and most tools to do so. They gave Americans the governmental equivalent of sonar, radar, GPS and weather satellites that allowed us to chart our own course as we pilot around the storms and deal with the winds and the tides.

The progressive governance model of believing the Butterfly Effect can be controlled can only restrict, it can never free.