This one came in late last night. Same as the others. Much shorter this time. Seems like whoever this is is aiming for pithy.
We consider the conservation of the past to be important as a tool for learning but that is absent.
We consider the forward motion of the moment to be what it could otherwise might have been.
This is known. This is Known.
There is in conservatism a desire to move backwards. The impossibility of time travel gives the lie of the jeremiad.
The jeremiad lives only in the present.
It is a refusal to accept reality on its own terms and to project onto the past with its attendant veneration and respect of elders that emanates almost naturally from the human condition.
It is a political tactic to manipulate the tendency for ancestor worship that grows naturally out of the love and attachment to mother.
Mother is from the past. Mother is perfect. Therefore the place mother came from must be better than now, which is not perfect.
This childlike reasoning is the symptom of the mental retardation that is conservatism.
The conservative misses the safety of mother's teat, and so turns to a false pragmatism and a self-righteousness of the now that views the now as degraded.
Pity the conservative. Pity him for his pathetic needs and unrealized motivations.
But do not LISTEN to him, for christ's sake.