Fix It Anyway

A conservative is always right. It’s simply impossible for him to be wrong and he sees evidence of his own world view everywhere.

Any ideologist asks what is best for society, and the conservative answers that, obviously, whatever works best is best. And how do we find out what works, if not by looking around for proof of what is functioning well in the real world. The existence of something proves that it works, for if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t exist. Logical, isn’t it?

There would never be a reason to change anything, for “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” as the saying goes. Only some light maintenance might be needed, but that’s about it.

Our society is indeed a healthy organism and a well-running machine. There’s only one problem with this analogy: the cogs of the machine are made of people, real human beings who are capable of suffering.

One may very well make the argument that society works best if a certain amount of the population is poor and unemployed. Then there will always be a surplus of labor that can keep costs down and make production more efficient. Once you have decided that the purpose of society is to produce and that success is measured in output, this might be a reasonable conclusion.

Another purpose could be to fulfill a nation’s cultural identity, and such an assumption would also yield a conservative policy.

So it all depends on what social purpose we imagine to exist, but why would we choose one and not another? Who knows, maybe the secret purpose of society is to feed the hungry gods of ancient mythology or some other absurd idea.

Well, there’s one thing we all want in our own life and that is happiness (whatever specific content we give it). All humans strive towards it in everything they do and since society is a human invention, it’s reasonable to think that that was why it was established.

Society can’t have any self-purpose apart from human aspiration and no matter how perfectly it may seem to operate, it needs fixing if people aren’t happy.

Conservatives aren’t happy about that, though…