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This is far more than a snarky or pejorative statement. It is a fair read of the framework that supports the thinking that manifests as "solutions" to the knotty, complex problems we face at every level. Fr Global to the local community to the individual.
When we meet new situations with old principles & ideas that are themselves a product of their time they will show themselves inadequate to the times.
Some principles are foundational & span all times. Very broadly speaking I call these 'The Tao'. The way of things.
The principle of 'All things Change' fits in this category. Another is the intrinsic function of opposites that is the essential quality in every vital thing. For example, when a vehicle accelerates it is in a change state, and experiencing a commensurate drag to its thrust.
Just like you could not design & build a 747 on the principles used to create the early airplanes, back to the point, when modern complexities are engaged with old ideas to what looks like similar problems the solutions fail. Often times badly.
What once worked and made sense, no longer works, and makes no sense in a different context. This is why there is a desire to get back to a time when things made sense in the context of the rules, principles, relationships & moors of a different time. Not better. Different.
What was "common sense" in a different context now becomes illogical and unworkable in the context we are in today. #MAGA doesn’t work for just this reason. It appeals to a time that was then, and will never be again.
Biblically this point is made in the parable teaching of "Do not put new wine in old wineskins". The point has been made in a number of ways. I think the fundamental struggle of our time is around this point. Not recognizing this basic struggle is tearing us apart.
Lincoln said it best: "The worn out creeds of the quiet past are insufficient to the stormy present. As our times are new we must think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we may save our country".
This is only one way to read the original post. Of course there is a whole lot of nonsense being spewed on its own terms for reasons nowhere near as lofty or essentially human as all this. Power lusts, various fears basic ignorance, unwillingness to change among them.
Whatever the motivation and reasons for the inadequate "conservative common sense" solutions what is increasingly clear is that as in the 60's and before that every other era large and small, "The Times they are A' Changing".
Being unable or unwilling to understand the change is one of the essential causatives of the problems we are daily experiencing. From Trump to Climate Change, to the nature of work & money, there are complexities that will not be resolved by a demand that things be as they were.
When the incomprehension becomes an unbreakable attachment to "the ancient ways" and the struggle becomes a fight a war of the nature we are in breaks out. The center is lost, and whatever "winning" is becomes the point & reason for making ones stand. Not truth, or progress,
or some general notion of "forming a more perfect union". The once useful ideas ossify into a calcified rigidness that fears change will unravel everything. Going to war is more desirable than losing one's sense of self & meaning.
Its not easy to do. Like most of the serious problems we are being tumbled around by today, there is not obvious solutions. The worse of it is at a time when we need the fidelity and strength of cooperation & the humility of a common goal - we are driven into this state of war
Beside the simple point of the post: that there is a strange illogic to the (so-called) "conservative" thinking, I think some of these dynamics underlie the point. Bad thinking got us here. I think only good thinking can get us out. Whatever that is it must include a
willingness to meet our Gordian Knots w/ a certain humility so that we can (a) see what we are actually looking at (b) share that with others and (c) learn in the present tense, not forgetting the Great Truths/Principles so that (d) we can learn how to solve these great problems.
Coda: Another way to think about these things is to note what happens when a limited or even wrong idea is held as summum bonum truth. Every other observation, truth, idea is contorted in order to maintain its supremacy. The best example of this is the Copernican Revolution.
To hold the earth as the center of the universe meant every other observation had to be adjusted, contorted in some instances, in order to fit the idea. For a good long time it did not really matter much. Earth at the center or not did not factor into the problems of the time.
For all intents and purposes it was "true". It was "true enough". However it is limited in what it can explain. Eventually the problems you need to solve require a more accurate understanding of how the solar system is actually organized.
In light of current understandings anyone trying to hold to the "old ways" would be seen as illogical and anachronistic. While the example is extreme, I think the point is precise to the question of what it means to be a "conservative" & "conservative thinking" today.
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