The medium was the message.
That is begging the question: who gets to decide what’s for the betterment of society?
Almost exactly 100 years ago, our government outlawed alcohol nationwide. The people who did so certainly thought that they were working for the betterment of society. But they didn’t actually make society better.
This country and numerous others once had eugenics programs in place, forcibly sterilizing and sometimes imprisoning those who were deemed genetically inferior. Eugenicists indisputably thought they were achieving the betterment of society.
Many other examples could be given.
So you have certain laws you would like to see made that you believe will lead to the betterment of society.
Is it possible that you are wrong?
Or are you always right 100% of the time?
The problem, as I see it, is that Conservatism is assumed a priori to be an obstacle against good things happening. The working definition seemingly in use by the not-conservative people in this thread trying to answer the question is that a conservative is opposed to progress, ergo, endorses insert bad thing here.
Unfettered “progressiveness” can be as harmful as conservatism, sometimes people come up with fecking stupid ideas in the name of progress that are best addressed by saying, no, let’s not to that and instead do what we were doing before. Prohibition of alcohol in the US was a progressive idea, just to give an example.
Human progress and politics is like going places in a car, of course you need the accelerator to move forward, but let’s see how far you go without brakes or even the reverse gear.
Demonizing Conservatism serves no purpose if the cause if social progress, some times it’s good to stop or even go back when things have moved in a direction that causes more harm than good. It’s the height of hubris to act as if one is capable of predicting with complete foresight all possible consequences and outcomes when setting the course of progress.
Progressive and conservative ideas can both be virtuous, it all depends on how and when they are applied, it all boils down to the Socratic truth, that all virtues taken to the extreme become a vice. By demonizing one or the other what is accomplished is increasing the divide between both ways to see the world, it’s an instrument of polarization that leads to opposing views becoming more extreme.
It’s funny that I didn’t read your post before writing more, it covers most of the same ideas and even the same example.
Of course conservatives approve of progress, so long as it doesn’t involve any actual change.