{"id":16174,"date":"2003-05-12T12:28:27","date_gmt":"2003-05-12T16:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/05\/12\/1134.html"},"modified":"2003-05-12T12:28:27","modified_gmt":"2003-05-12T16:28:27","slug":"conservative-tenet-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/05\/12\/conservative-tenet-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservative Tenet # 11"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At this rate, Your Humble Blogger will finish the Conservative Tenets<\/a> before he forgets why he started them...\n\n

11. The indispensability and sanctity of inherited institutions, values, symbols, and rituals.\n\n

OK, can we assume, for the sake of sanity, that Rossiter is implying the word \"some\" in from of the word \"inherited\"? Can we, in fact, converse the argument, so the Conservative is saying that the absence of inherited institutions, values, symbols and rituals (ivsrs, if you will) is what he fears and deplores? It seems to me that the problem is not that all inherited ivsrs are bad, or that they are all indispensable and sanctified, but the difficulty of distinguishing which ivsrs have value in the present and which do not.\n\n

The Conservative, being by nature conservative, is likely to look at the ivsrs with an indulgent eye. If an ivsr is old, it is good prima facie<\/i>, or our illustrious forebears would have already gotten rid of it. Sure, changing times (which are bad in and of themselves, to the Conservative) may require some alteration, but the sacrifice is great, and should be made reluctantly.\n\n

The Progressive, being by nature interested in change, is likely to look at the ivsrs with a jaundiced eye. The past being a swamp of slavery, exploitation and oppression, the benefit of freeing ourselves from the shackles of old ivsrs is, prima facie<\/i>, worth whatever value may be remaining in them. Sure, society may need its ivsrs, but we should throw out whatever we can afford to, create exciting new ones, and keep the rest reluctantly.\n\n

Do I exaggerate? Yes, of course I exaggerate; I'm a blogger. And, as you may have noticed, I am a liberal with an instinctive love for tradition, so naturally I think the correct answer is in the middle. Deeper than that, though, I think that humans are, at heart, pattern-matching creatures, and that the ivsrs are aids to pattern-matching. New ones are weaker than old ones, if only because the patterns take a while to become routine. New ones are necessary, because it's hard to repair the world with the old ones. Ideally, every generation would look at each institution, each value, each symbol, and each ritual, and choose whether to keep them or not, depending not on a Progressive or a Conservative bias, but on the actual value, the actual indispensability, and the actual sanctity of each.\n\n

Hereditary monarchy? Slavery? Get rid of it. The Pledge of Allegiance? Modify it. Patriots' Day? Keep it. Representative Democracy? Keep it. George Washington on the dollar bill? Keep it. The public school system? Improve it. Racism? Root it out. The flag? Keep it.\n\n

And so on. My point isn't the specifics, but the process, and the need for the process to involve the specifics.\n\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this rate, Your Humble Blogger will finish the Conservative Tenets before he forgets why he started them… 11. The indispensability and sanctity of inherited institutions, values, symbols, and rituals. OK, can we assume, for the sake of sanity, that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}