A Scylla and Charybdis for Anti-Woke Conservatives

Said this recently, but here it is again:

Conservatism has to do two things now:

[1] Roll back the destructive "gains" of woke progressivism (scare quotes, of course, because, though we're talking about gains from the perspective of woke progressivism, they were losses for the nation).

[2] NOT GO CRAZY

   The tendency will likely be to go too far in the other direction. Hence the popular pendulum analogy. But this is largely under our control. We don't have to go crazy--don't have to go too far back to the right, out beyond the sane (roughly) center.

   Sadly, I don't expect the red team to hit the sweet spot between 1 and 2. Even though I think there's plenty of room between them.

   What I expect is for the right to go too far. This will itself cause our left-leaning institutions like universities and the media to pull back toward the left. And so on...

   

   My current view, FWIW, is that what we need is a firm foundation in moderate conservatism that is open to social innovation without running headlong toward half-baked, untested ideas for change of the kind advocated by the lefty-left. This seems to me to be the natural, sane position. And that's basically moderate, Burkean conservatism. Nothing in that view counsels political or social stagnation. If someone wants to suggest that we consider, say, abandoning our system of public restroom segregation by sex, nothing in (Burkean) conservatism prevents us from considering that option. When I was younger, I often wondered whether that system would, in some more enlightened day, come to seem like old-timey segregation of swimming areas. (Incidentally, a conservative friend tells me that kind of sex-segregation wasn't all that common until the 19th century. Dunno whether that's true.)

   Anyway: sure, state your arguments for sex-integrated public restrooms. Or UBI. Or whatever.

   All Burkean conservatism says is: do not run headlong toward ill-considered and untested alternatives.

   I'd add: and waking up one day and decreeing that women have penises is right out...

   My current view is that conservative impulses keep society sane and alive. Liberal or leftists impulses propose innovation. Without which--stagnation and morbidity. 

  Such proposals are basically hypotheses--hypotheses about what would make for a good society.

  Now, most hypotheses--in science and ordinary life--are false. Hypotheses are guesses and most guesses are wrong. And so etc.

   One core failure (among many) of the Woketarian left is that basically seized on exciting, outlandish hypotheses and then insisted that these be immediately accepted as unquestionable fact. Thus it treated hypotheses as knowledge. Which is just about the worst mistake you can make.

   The left-liberalism of e.g. the '80s, '90s and early '00s made proposals and--generally--let society accept or reject them. Notably, we accepted toleration of same-sex relationships. We collectively judged that this was the right thing to do. And society is better for it. We evolved.

   The contrast between that kind of social change and the kind of loony, radical, totalitarian change concerning e.g. transgenderism that the left has been attempting--with a lot of success--to impose on society...is night and day.

   Not sure what to say about SCOTUS deciding that same-sex marriage is marriage, and we must permit it. I long supported same-sex marriage, but I have some sympathy with conservatives who say: perhaps we should be legally obligated to recognize same-sex unions...but SCOTUS exceeded its authority in basically deciding that such unions are marriages. That should have been left to society to work out for itself... Dunno what to think about that stuff...

   Anyway. The point was just supposed to be that Scylla-and-Charybdis-y one at the top...