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Couldn't agree more.
There is a basic, universe level quirk of math that, I think, does a great job of capturing the conservative mindset:
The relative loss-gain imbalance; If I have a 10% reduction in any starting quantity, what do I need to reclaim to get back to even? It isn't 10%, it's about 11% (roughly).
Recovering from a mistake or loss takes more effort than the magnitude of the loss itself. Therefore, massive changes happening quickly in any direction are a bad thing. I am some (rare) times empathetic to progressive policy intended outcomes but their proposed policy functions are simply too large, too fast and, therefore, the risk of a fuck-up is so large that I think, in many cases, it represents a society level threat.
Yeah. From some non-political fields, I can tell that my heart is progressive, but through bitter experience my head is conservative, if I stop to use it. It's very who-whom.
When I'm the one pushing for the changes, I've thought enough about them (of course I have!) that I feel confident that they'll be a net benefit. But I can't see what everyone else's life is like, and for any long term project, I need widespread buy-in from all sectors. If I overturn their world, I won't get that. And then, of course, if it's someone else trying to push their (poorly thought out, most likely) changes on me that I haven't had time to fully examine the consequences of, well, that of course is a problem. :-)
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