While Cobb meant The Black Political Spectrum to explain, well, the black political spectrum, I thought his description of how the liberal, progressive, and conservative traditions view the status quo was damned perceptive:

I have cast my lot with the conservatives primarily owing to the fact that I have come to accept that the public we have is all the public we get. In other words, I don't see much practical use in black attempts to reform American society. The great strength of conservatism lies in its ability to make use of the status quo. The liberal looks at the status quo with contempt, sees a hopeless situation and seeks to extract a ransom which supports the only valuable pieces. The progressive looks at the status quo with condescention and seeks to create an island of advanced rationality within it. The conservative looks at the status quo with disbelief and seeks to exploit its very nature.

The conservative's disbelief of the status quo owes to his inate understanding that things fall apart. So if things are not falling apart, there must be something people believe strongly that are holding things together - that something must be the strength of the system. Grab hold of those things and make them your advantage - defend them at all costs, otherwise everything will fall apart.