The Progressive impulse is always, "I can do better than this, so I'm going to tear it down." The Conservative response is, "Building is really hard, so let's be confident we actually can do better before we start demolishing good if imperfect things."

The full story: our oldest had just turned two, and had figured out how to climb out of his crib and open the door. We had a child lock on the door, but we didn't want to use it - we wanted to train him to stay in bed. So we read all the sleep and child rearing books, and decided to follow their instructions. They said the kid might get up 5 times, maybe even 10. One book said, "We heard of one kid who got up 20 times." My wife drew the short straw the first night. He finally started screaming his little toddler head off somewhere around 100 times, but it was over 130 before he finally stayed in bed. The next night it was my turn, and he stayed in bed after getting up and opening the door only 30 times. We figured we were winning. The next night I was teaching a class, so my wife was home alone. I came home to find her sobbing in the upstairs hallway, outside his room. She had returned him to bed 150 times before she finally gave up and just locked his bedroom door. And that's what we did for the next 4 months or so, until Thanksgiving, when we were visiting my wife's family - and there was no lock on the door. To understand this next bit, you need to understand that my wife is a peace-loving beatnik who insisted we never spank our children. After she'd put him back to bed some 20 times, she came and got me, and hissed in my ear, "You get him to bed and you do whatever it takes." So yeah, I did. Took 9 more tries that night before he finally learned that getting out of bed would result in actual physical pain, 5 the next night, then 3, then 2, then finally he stayed in bed.