Full Idea
Those in command see their duty as defending order, without which no social life can survive; and the only order they conceive is the existing one.
Gist of Idea
National leaders want to preserve necessary order - but always the existing order
Source
Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.249)
Book Reference
Weil,Simone: 'An Anthology' [Penguin 1986], p.249
A Reaction
She sympathises with them, because a new order is such an unknown. But it always struck me as weird that traditions are preserved because they are traditions, and not because they are good. (My old school, for example!).