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Comment by redwood | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting that growing up I don't think anyone ever introduced the concept of conservativism to me. As a California native it was simply something that the zeitgeist viewed as a negative that never needed to be defined. However once you become exposed to chesterton's fence and start realizing that there has to be a fundamental benefit to preserving the previous order it becomes far less one-dimensional... this quote continues that one dimensional tribal mindset that I realize in hindsight was so counter to critical thinking

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Conservatism is surprisingly simple on the surface. "promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values". That's it.

The real legwork is on "what are these institutions, customs, ans values we want to preserve"? And if you dig deep into US history, you realize that such benefits from traditional values were not equally distributed. So it's rather easy for me to reject the philosophy in this context of the US.

That simplicity is also why conservatism can be said to have no true convictions nor aspirations. It's in the name: it exists to look in the past, see what things are there, and say "I want these things!". But there's a lot of "things" in the past, so this philosophy could be extended to include practically anything. I could say "taxing the rich" is a conservatism perspective and simply point to corporate tax code from the 40's-70's.

So that's a long-winded means of saying that this quote is surprisingly accurate, at least for my country, when looked through the lens of history (the very lens conservatism uses).

I view it as the brakes on the political car. Brakes are what enable you to go fast

In this case, we're in a video game where holding the brake button has you shift into reverse. We've very clearly been moving backward as of late. Maybe let off the brake bhtton for a bit?

Shame the brakes are so selective, as well. Suddenly the friction all disappears when it comes to data centers.

I don't see any conservative in power in the US. Maybe that's where we're differing

For traditional philosophy, perhaps not. Or maybe it's a hyper conservative looking way past their own generation and trying to take us straight to the 1880's. You can argue either: it's a wide net after all.

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