day no. 15,316: nothing is conserved by accident

Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics:
1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

Anything that is not explicitly trying to hold on will eventually let go.

In other words, things do not become more conservative by accident and they most assuredly do become more liberal without any thought whatsoever.

"We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post." - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, The Eternal Revolution

If you are not actively engaged in keeping the post white, it will eventually be black. If you want to retain its whiteness, you must constantly be reforming it to its former white or it will be gray in a few days and black in a few years. As Chesterton points out, to love white posts is to love the upkeep of reapplying white. Anything not explicitly committed to this process will have a blackened post. Liberalism's insistence on progress is a commitment to black posts. The only hope for a white post is a conservative who loves white enough to continually apply new coats.