Progressivism lives on the largesse of liberalism. Liberalism operates within the bounds of conservatism.

Progs may create, criticize, and complain only in a context that allows deviation from a norm.

Libs afford them deviation; Cons afford them a norm to work with/against.

Cons may complain about liberalism, and despise progressivism, but if both provide them wealth (material and cultural), it’s a good enough bargain that they’ll put up with difference, deviation, and critique.

Progs are not likely to understand what Libs or Cons afford them, unless they are frequently reminded—such as by a ritual like Thanksgiving, where everyone pays heed to how labor and good fortune give way to the stability that affords creativity and cultural critique—

*However*

Progs, left to their devices, will flip such a ritual on its head, and introduce something like Privilegehaving, where good fortune is seen as undeserved, and labor is seen as an unfair condition to be escaped from. Where all property is stolen and so must be stolen back, etc.

If such antipathic ideas take root, Progs will begin to lose their playfulness, and adopt every aspect of Cons they despise: rigidity, judgmentalism, obstinacy, purity—none of which will be tempered by conservative values of labor, gratitude, or humility.

Liberalism will then begin to break, as Progs see it as a barrier to their anti-conservatism, and Cons are no longer receiving a benefit from the deviancy (née innovation) of Progs—who are more and more spiteful against—and less and less playful with—inherited norms.

I wish this parable had a happy ending.

I don’t see one right now without a return to liberal values of individualism and liberty—and a return to the conservative values that precede them: respect, loyalty, honesty, hard work, gratitude—and perhaps even the notion of a soul.