Conserving Change

Too many people make the mistake of thinking Conservatives are anti-change at worst or at least certainly change-phobic. As one of the Conservative ilk, I can assure the two or three of you reading this that I am not afraid of or anti-change. I couldn’t work managing Microsoft systems if I did.
Let’s take a closer look at the word. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are a few definitions, but here’s the first one in the list, one most germane:

conservative, a. and n.
(kənˈsɜːvətɪv)
[a. F. conservatif, -ive (= Pr. conservatiu, It. conservativo (Florio), prob. med.L. conservātīvus), f. L. conservāt-, ppl. stem of conservāre to conserve: see -ive.]
A. adj.
1.a Characterized by a tendency to preserve or keep intact or unchanged; preservative.

Tendency is exactly the correct term. There have to be good, necessary, true, and justified reasons for change. In my worldview, change for its own sake is ill-advised. Frost’s “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was up” is the Conservative’s referential quote. What has worked has a tendency to continue working. The Bible says there’s nothing new under the sun and I think that’s quite true and just for giggles, here’s a French aphorism in the same vein, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
None of this implies that if there’s a good reason for tearing down Frost’s fence that we shouldn’t. Conservation does not equal stasis. Biologists, in their quest to conserve, even destroy life while seeking to conserve it. There are many more aspects to conservation than the simplistic “afraid of change” meme.
There’s always the allegation that while conceding the point of fact that Conservatives aren’t change-averse, we respond so slowly as to guarantee change is impossible. This may be true, but it is to a point and a practical one at that: no one staves off change forever and extinction is the reward for those who ignore it. The only constant is change goes the old saw. We change, sometimes for the good (and here’s the point), sometimes for the bad. We Conservatives want change for the betterment of society as much as we can control it, building up from the basic constants taught us by long history and convention to achieve higher, loftier aims.
For example, slavery has been one of humanity’s default institutions for most of its history. American Conservatives, in seeking its destruction, drew upon an even older—and decidedly unintuitive—idea of universal human equality, based on what they thought of as the unchanging principles for living codified in the Bible and other canons of Western Civilization. Even then, such a change was deemed so drastic, it required taking steps that although ended with Emancipation, sometimes resulted in quizzical artifacts such as the oft-maligned idea that Blacks were three-fifths of a human being. The intelligent questioner should ask why that was necessary and in so doing uncover the kernel of truth hidden from free view by the old dust pile of history.
I suppose it would’ve been possible to ram through a change that immediately manumitted black Americans within the year, but the United States would not be recognizable in any form and certainly not in the form we know and enjoy today. Change, for change’s sake, must be looked at with a jaundiced eye. Considering both short- and long-term consequences and allowing for the fact that while there may be unseen consequences, they wouldn’t be too damaging or immense as to have escaped consideration. We are human after all.
So you get it, Conservatives aren’t change-averse (or at least grant me the point for arguments’ sake). Why is Fred going on about this? Well, it seems today is National Coming Out Day and my twitter feed had some references to it this morning, including this one:

Now, I like Louis C.K. He’s profane, but very funny. However, I can substantively say he’s no Conservative and, it seems, he’s no philosopher either.
The “argument” he’s making here can be illustrated as follows:

1. Two men in love wanting to get married is not a social issue.
2. Two men in love wanting to get married does not concern anyone else.
3. Two men in love wanting to get married cannot do so because you (the Conservative, I take it) don’t want them to do so.
4. Two men in love wanting to get married cannot do so because you (the Conservative) don’t want them to do so because you (the Conservative) don’t want to have to explain to your kid the fact two men in love want to get married.

Number 4 is really rather silly, because he answers the “why” of number 3 in an inane manner. If there are people who don’t want men in love to get married to each other because they don’t want to have to explain to a child the intricacies of the situation, they’re truly misguided. Parents have been unable to explain to their children the intricacies of all sorts of issues from time immemorial (hence: “Because I said so!”) The other day, I overhead a dad try to explain why the sky was blue to their five-year-old. Hilarious.
What are we to draw from this? That the sky is or isn’t blue because the parent can’t or won’t explain why it is? I think I’ll chalk up number 4 to a joke; after all, C. K. is a comedian first and foremost.
Numbers 1 and 2 are really one and the same: Two men in love wanting to get married is not a social issue and as a result, concerns no one else.
Patently false. Marriage, of any sort, is a social issue as the existence of marriage licenses attest in every country on Earth. The question is why is it a social issue? What business is it of the state’s (read: people, society, etc.) that it “controls” marriage? I have answered this question elsewhere on the blog so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say there are good reasons for why society has “evolved” to grant marriage whatever legal protections and special status it currently has, and like any true Conservative, I tend towards its preservation.
Number 3 is the crux of the issue. Initially, I enclosed the word ‘argument’ in quotes because C.K. doesn’t actually make one. There are no explicit conclusions but there is a hidden one: he thinks society (i.e. people) should allow two men in love to get married. Which is strange because one of his premises is that it is none of society’s (i.e. people) business who gets married to whom!
So it comes to this: why, in spite of his earlier assertion, should society allow two men in love to get married in contravention of societal norms and mores for a very long time? Why the change, and why now? Does it benefit society? If so, does it benefit all of society or just a subset? How small or large is this subset? What are the consequences of enacting this change? On what basis does this change stand?
The reason C.K.’s given for (the Conservative) to reject gay marriage is ludicrous, of course, but here’s the thing: I reject the idea we (i.e. society) should grant marriage licenses to homosexuals, however much they’re in love. (For starters, society cares not a whit about “love” or indeed any kind of emotion. Except for the small area of criminal law when the penalties are different based on mens rea, but IANAL.)
The reason I do so is simple: we do not yet understand the ramifications of tearing down those fences. We have not even started to answer the questions little old me has posed above. The push to forever alter the modus operandi is carried along on a tidal wave of rising emotion, along with burning altruism, sweeping aside centuries of tradition because it feels like it’s the right thing.
There is no such thing as an “I don’t care” worldview, unaffecting everyone but those who choose to be affected. Every cause has an effect, and every effect its cause. To implement such far-reaching changes to society without giving a moment’s thought beyond it feeling like it’s the right thing to do is anathema to the Conservative.

“Every social practice is the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human. When a society accepts and approves the practice, it implicitly commits itself to the worldview that supports it—all the more so if the practice is enshrined in law.” Nancy Pearcey

Imagine, if you will, a Catholic priest refusing to marry two women when it is legal to do so? That priest is now in contravention of a legally binding statute backed by the immense force of the State which can compel individuals to go along or face penalties. Is this the road we want to go down? The image of priests in handcuffs getting carted off to jail because they refuse to  marry gay men to each other rouses a wonderful feeling of peace in your mind, does it?
As a matter of pragmatics, I do not reject out of hand the idea of homosexual marriage. If evidence points to its beneficence, surely what’s the harm indeed? Have at it and let the chips fall where they may. I have to follow the unadulterated evidence, but so far, it seems no one has been willing to even look at it.