Go back to the age of Spartans, and look at their conservative society for their time. By today's standards it was profoundly sick. Extreme violence was celebrated and even demanded. Their men would enter manhood by stealthily murdering an innocent slave; children proved their strength by withstand ritual whippings without passing out; wives were justly claimed by forceful abduction; homsexuality was compulsory - and on.
Sparta was a society made up of people akin to a MS-13 type gang, and worse. Their culture of child abuse was horrific and the people were, as they could only be, made partially insane from traumatic abuse.
Yet it worked. They survived for a long time. And with strict adherence to traditions they managed to continue on for hundreds of years. High death rates--as they were at the time--were balanced with high birth rates.
Hence the systems, doctrines, and traditions of ancient Sparta were successful. So who am I to judge? Well I'm not judging, but I can see ancient Sparta for what it was. It was a waring society culturally evolved to deal with conditions of extreme hardship - and relentless barbarians at the gate. They made a god out of violence and brutish masculinity, ultimately because they had to. Awful conditions dictated it.
However, that kind of survival code comes at a cost. Spartans were deeply neurotic and therefore unfeeling. Their existence was emotionally numb, as it only can be when you're living in a severely repressed state. So they were alive - but hardly living.
So, when would be the right time for Spartans to challenge their traditions and ask themselves if there's a better way to be? They should do it when times are peaceful - when the old codes and traditions can be seen as out of date. And when they take this position, I would say they go from being conservative to progressive. (I say 'progressive' in the real meaning of the word - not the modern Leftist meaning).
The point behind my observation of Sparta, is that it's not ideal simplistically presume that traditional ways are best because they "worked" and are therefore "proven". Some societies that are surviving should nonetheless not be surviving - that is, in their existing form.
Take a look at societies that have arranged marriages for example. They're often highly successful in the 'stable' sense of the word, but on a human level they are tragic. Sure they achieve their stability, but only by violating the natural process of mate-selection. Hence, behind the winning tradition is a losing reality. An ideal society should never need arranged marriages that threaten to drive so many people into a silent misery. And for the long term, it is failing strategy as there will be a compromise on the genetic health of the offspring, which may become pronounced over time.
To a degree, I believe that traditional (conservative) western society--though well worth celebrating on many levels--still has a way to go. And this is why I'm as much a progressive and as a conservative. The difference between myself and a common conservative, is that I have a background in understanding how child abuse, child neglect, and common mistakes that we all make with children today affect the mental make-up of our society at large, and how that ultimately affects the entire operational structure of our society over time.
Hence, I do not want to see New Zealand back to a 'good old days' that never really were. At least not on all levels. We can do much better I believe and go much further forward [my blog is filled with assertions on how things can be improved]. However, progressive change must be done with calm thinking and a respect for why our traditions were established in the first place. It's insane of course to remove an old pillar without first understanding why it's there.
So I am not a conservative. I am a cautious progressive.
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-Note, progressive's should not to be confused with regressives, the latter of which often call themselves progressives. Bluntly, the extreme-leftist ideologists of today are our modern regressives, and they are pathetic. They don't respect tradition nor wish to understand it or build from it. They're mis-educated and under-educated and operate more like vandals than builders. As it seems to me at least, they're driven more by anger and frustration than objective insight.
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