My own view is that conservatism is fundamentally rooted in skepticism about the human mind and its capacity to change society. So it's basically resistant to large-scale change, but, on the rare occasions that such change happens, is necessary and turns out okay, conservatives can live with it.

So writes Andrew Sullivan. Yes. Tempo, in addition to scale, defines the conservative resistance: change should be small and gradual. The conservative philosophy applied tends towards 'messy'. Sullivan himself provides the paradox of a conservative supporting a shocking, awesome, massive, and immediate revolution in Middle Eastern society.

Whatever its wisdom or moral inspiration, such a big bang is not conservative. The more self aware liberal, having faith in incredible change as Thomas Barnett does below, finds comfort in the Operation Iraqi Freedom upheaval: "Will this all work out in our favor? Hardly. But that wasn't the point of the Big Bang, simply setting in motion change was."