In 1848, a man by the name of James Marshall was living a completely normal day, overseeing work on the construction of a sawmill. Unexpectedly, he saw something shiny within the river. He said: “It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold.” It was, in fact, gold!
This idea of finding something magnificent within the dirt is what conservatism is all about. When Marshall’s discovery led to over 300,000 people flocking to California, they each took to panning the river. To pan, you put some river mud in a pan (preferably with holes in it), add some water, and sift through all the muck to hopefully discover gold.
In America, conservatives are not against change. Though conservatism is about conserving, it is not about keeping what is worthless. For hundreds and thousands of years, different types of government have been tried, ancient philosophers have theorized, and God has spoken. There is nothing new going on today, human nature is prone to trying the same things over and over in hopes that someday they will work. As a conservative, one would look at the complicated and murky history of ideas, and pan for gold. Conservatism takes the morals that God has given, the types of government that have actually worked, the idea of natural law, the fact that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights -- and considers these things to be pure gold. These ideas matter not because they are old or Western or “white,” they matter because they produce the best results. Conservative ideas have value as they have proven to be true over and over again. These ideas are not just true because someone says they are -- they are part of the way the world works, they’re built into the foundation of life. Conservatism is preserving what is true, valuable, and realistic -- it is sifting through the repetitive postmodern mud and finding that glimmer of something, something that shows there is a way to live a wonderful life in a fallen world.
