When you use the word "change," you fall into the same conceptually imprecise error as those who embrace the greatly over-worked term "progress." I always used to use the example of a rat riding a bit of trash into the sewer in a thunder-storm, as an example of "progress." There is no virtue in progress, and none in change. The devil or virtue is in the details, the specifics of your direction, not the embracing of an action word.
Conservatives do not fear change as such. To the Conservative, however, change is a building on a firm foundation. To the Leftist--the Socialist egalitarian, bent upon levelling Society and collectivizing control--change is a disruption, a destruction of the foundation, not a building upon past achievement. We are the builders; they are the destroyers.
You are, of course, correct in your references to classical "Liberalism." However, in America those values are a part of our tradition; a part of our tradition springing directly out of the dynamic achievements of the original settlers, and the lessons that they learned in building a new Society from the ground up. It was not, as in Europe, a matter of sitting around and philosophizing about what might be nice. It was the tradition here. So there is no dichotomy, when American Conservatives seek to preserve their tradition, with the best of classical "Liberalism."
I make these points not to attack you, but in the interests of seeking greater clarity in a cause common to most of us at this forum.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I love your "rat riding trash in a thunder storm" reference, I plan to steal it and use it elsewhere.
Of course, my reference to change is perhaps not the same as yours.
In a world in which the tectonic plates are shifting under our feet, in which old alliances are disappearing before our eyes, in which technologies are changing faster than we can learn them, it takes a certain kind of person to adapt and thrive in that kind of environment.
The leftists do not do well. They are generally the most conformist in their thinking, and they do not understand the forces causing the changes. Consequently, they are almost always wrong in their predictions, and wrong in their proposed solutions. The future always blind-sides them, and a seemingly uncontrolled future scares them.
Conservatives have a clearer understanding of what is real and what is not, what matters and what does not. Furthermore, when you are in the middle of a storm, you can only navegate if your guiding principles are clear, and conservatives are more clear in their guiding principles.
The left's project is trying to force the world into a mold it doesn't fit. Conservatives navegate the world as it is, and use it as raw material to build the world they want.
So, you can take it as ironic, but conservatives adapt to change better than do socialists, who forever try to freeze frame the world into a pattern they can control.