…conservatism is inherently skeptical of new ideas, not because it is opposed to new ideas, but because as a simple matter of math, most new ideas are bad ideas. Every child is a new idea-spewing machine, and most of those ideas are going to be garbage. As a small child, I thought I could take a piece of heating coal I found on the street, put it on the stove, and then press down really hard on it with a fork to turn it into a diamond. That would’ve been a great idea if it worked. But most new ideas don’t work, so they aren’t great, as the man who thought he could win the Iditarod with a team of cats and basset hounds quickly learned.
