[quote=briansd1]
Progressive believe that times change. We need to evolve with the times and adjust our behavior and national policies accordingly.

I’m confident that progressives will win in the end. Conservatives are always dragged behind kicking and screaming.
[/quote]

Perhaps this is not everyone’s definition of conservative, but being a conservative does mean and recognizing that there are patterns, rules, and sets of behaviors that have served us well for the past thousands of years. We human beings have, through trial and error, generally found which sets of rules and norms are the most successful.

Now, for some reason, Brian, you believe in throwing all that institutional knowledge away. Because you think you know better. And that is the problem with progressives. All of a sudden you think the rules of the universe have changed and you can disregard what has been working for humanity for the past thousand years. Any study of history shows that what the successes of humanity are and how they came about.

Conservatives are aware that times change and are willing to make changes. However, there needs to be more proof that it will work instead of bumbling around and trying to trial and error a whole new society.

The rules are there for a reason. You can’t all of a sudden make up new rules just because you think you know better than everyone else.

And that’s the problem with a lot of “liberal/progressive” policies. They are conceived with the idea that the policy makers “know better”. Often it ignores a lot of history and it deliberately goes away from the actions and policies and rules that have been proven successful.

For example:

History has shown that appeasing your enemies does not work. History is littered with the societies that decided to commit suicide by trying to placate their enemies. I mean, yes, we use Hitler often as an example of how not to treat your enemies, and yet liberals/progressives keep making the same mistake over and over again. Because they think they know better, that their way is better. Obama is a good example of what’s going on. He thinks that his personal charisma will be sufficient to override the natural self-interest of Russia and Iran. He thought he knew better than history. He is finding out how wrong he is.

That is why liberals and progressives often follow behavior that leads to failure.

Believe me, I used to be like that. I used to think that I knew better and that my superior thinking, logic, and experience could trump any old “custom” and “rules” and all that. I found out how wrong I was and that society has evolved in certain ways because it adopted the most successful behaviors, made them into rules, and followed them.

Conservatism does not imply rigidity. However, it just requires a higher standard and proof instead of the typical liberals/progressive lines: “it’s different this time around” or “the rules have changed” or “i know better”. To be conservative is to acknowledge that that there is a pattern of success that we have followed, and our society has been successful because of those principles and those rules.