It occurred to me that it is symbolically significant that the major fashion centers of the world: Paris, Rome/Milan, and New York, tend to centers of political radicalism.
Burke commented 200 years ago that the Leftist revolutionary tradition tends to create an enchantment with novelty. They want lots of new things, particularly new things that do not arise from a traditional focus. They want lots of noise and fury; they want entertainment, and it can be the sort provided by the worst excesses of the Roman Coliseum.
What does not organize the flood of the new is any sort of goal or tradition-oriented principle. The New is assumed to be progress.
Politically, this leads to mass support for stupid ideas, which people do not think through. It leads to the subversion of reason. When you take a powerful car, put it into drive, put a brick on the accellerator, it will run into a wall, sooner or later.
The Conceit of the intellectuals who try and run the process is that they know what they are talking about. Most of them have NEVER accomplished any practical task–Lenin didn’t, Mao didn’t, Hitler didn’t, Ho Chi Minh didn’t (although he did wait tables and work as a cook, which is useful). What happens, practically, is that the torrent of images and novelty creates chaos. Chaos can only be tempered by the individuals in question, or by forcing everyone to fit into a Procrustean Bed that is the exact dimension of the intellectual in charge. This means that the exact energy unleashed by the elimination of reason will lead, in short order, to oppression.
This begins with the sacralization of the evanescent. Conservatism is the best block to this. It slows progress, but stops regress, which is positive. The Liberal ethos, based on Reason, leads to progress, slowly, but inevitably. Any rejection of Liberalism goes in the opposite direction. The question is: do we go 3 steps forward, 1 step back, or 5 steps back and stay there?