It’s easy to assume that when an ideological system is developed it will function much like a machine and only occasionally require adjustments and fine-tuning to incorporate newfound knowledge and changing circumstances.

A different understanding could be more true: ideology is akin to a biological organism in a constant state of change and evolving toward a singular logical conclusion that will ultimately be the death of the ideological organism itself. Since organisms die, so too should ideology, which is passed on from one organism to another in an altered and constantly changing state by generational succession. Ideological self-replication will develop a cancer that will grow by the generation until it is dead.

Of course, it is not possible for an ideology to remain constant if it has any adherents, but we do know that ideology, developed with mechanisms to resist change such as religion, dies at a slowed rate.

Christianity is still around, albeit far from its original conception after two millennia.

Liberalism in comparison is on its death bed after only fifteen generations. The mechanisms of self-preservation that perpetuated liberalism have failed, and the ideology has turned on itself in the pursuit of seeking its own logical conclusion. The difference between liberalism and Christianity regarding this concept is that liberalism encourages change through rationality, which has induced evolution at a hyper rate toward its inevitable death.

Developing an ideological system without mechanisms to resist change gives cautious conservatives little to no defensible ground to stand on. It will be difficult for the conservative to argue the negative and maintain the status quo against the progressive that argues the next logical evolution take place immediately.

I am not proposing big-C ideological Conservatism; sometimes change is necessary and a resilient ideology must be able to adapt to a changing environment. Evolution is good, necessary, and inevitable, but sometimes it’s bad, especially when it is not necessary.

What I am proposing are two mechanisms to be incorporated as integral parts of any ideology:

(1) Ideological mechanisms to resist change

Mechanisms to resist change are found all throughout Christianity. The most important is that the Bible is the literal word of God. That in itself is compelling enough to stave off the winds of change; would you defy the word of God? Revelation chapter 22 is a fiery condemnation to Hell for any who dare alter the word of God. Colossians chapter two is an explicit warning to Christians to hold to the teachings of Christ when confronted with worldly matters. There is much more, but as you can see, Christianity comes with at least a couple of mechanisms to resist change.

There is a similar pattern among successful religions to have these sort of mechanisms, as there is with Confucianism, which coincidentally has had two millennia of success.

(2) Ideological fail-safe mechanisms

A fail-safe mechanism is a response that would be triggered in the event of any negative outcome or catastrophic failure as the result of an ideological implementation. Organisms have this as a built-in response due to part of their own physiology, but all too often ideology can override that fail-safe.

If you were to touch a hot stove, your response would be to jerk your hand away from it. That’s a physiological fail-safe mechanism. Now, imagine if you were convinced that touching a hot stove was not harmful but good for you. Would you still keep your hand on it? It would depend on how committed you are. Liberalism has had similar results to keeping your hand on a hot stove. Yet, arguably no fail-safe has been triggered. An ideological fail-safe is a crisis of faith, and there may be a way to induce it early on in the event of negative outcomes, instead of when it is too late.

With hindsight, the logical evolution of liberalism is clearer. It is, however, much more difficult to have the foresight to predict the ideological steps and conclusions of an emerging ideology.

Prediction of logical outcomes from the tenets of an ideology is a subject worth exploring. Liberals failed to follow their premise toward conclusions and failed to develop safeguards to prevent ideology run disastrously errant.

If there is anything that can be learned from their failures, it’s that prudence is a virtue.