"Prevailing opinions generally are the opinion of the generation that is passing." 

-Disraeli

It is the mark of a free people to routinely adopt the best traditions of the past and the best ideas for the future, while simultaneously rejecting the worst of both the past and the newly proposed. 

A society that builds its two major political parties around the fight between the past and change (something akin to arguing about a bar tab on the Titanic) had better have a wise populace.