One conservative impulse, which I share, is the sense that nothing is indestructible, many things are fragile, and that much of what holds civil life together is unknown, possibly unknowable. In short, that most reforms are like digging a trench in the middle of a Manhattan street: who really knows what old and necessary steam fitting is down there that had slipped off the planning maps?
The analogy holds for its implication of paralysis, too: we cannot dig recklessly, but often we must dig. To work at civil life is the surest way to illuminate it, even though the trenchwork simultaneously threatens what is in place.
I accept as true that civil life is ever put at risk by both change and sameness, and by about equal measure. The moderate is the muddler; the wisdom we need is that of the muddler; civilizations that succeed muddle through. I hate revolutions and oppression alike, but accept that both are - wretched truth! - occasionally the least evil option.
