The White Post

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone,
you leave them as they are.  But you do not.  If you leave a thing alone,
you leave it to a torrent of change.  If you leave a white post alone, it
will soon be a black post.  If you particularly want it to be white, you
must be always painting it again: that is you must always be having a
revolution.  Briefly, if you want the old white post, you must have a new
white post.  But this, which is true even of inanimate things, is in a
quite special and terrible sense true of all human things.  

  -- G.K. Chesterton