Ask the Questions
4th June 2023
The older people get, the more they see conservatism is the right way to go. Liberals protest that’s because old people find comfort in old things and are afraid to try anything new. The truth is, when something new works, that’s an exception and it’s rare. As a general rule, if it worked we’d already be doing it. And it’s the older people who can see it because this is a pattern of averages, and it takes time to see it. You have to watch a few plans put into practice, notice across the years what succeeds and what doesn’t.
Now obviously, if we accepted “new things are no good” as policy to be implemented and enforced across the board, in all contexts, without any exceptions asked for or granted, it would be counterproductive. But guess what? We don’t. Nobody advocates for such a thing. A conservative is not an unreasoning, strident extremist lobbying for the patent office to be shut down because everything worth inventing has been invented. Rather, a conservative asks questions. He refuses to grant the new thing the benefit of the doubt.
It is the liberal who is the strident, unreasoning extremist. “A new thing! Let’s get behind it!”