Is the right ever right?

Way back in college I recall a class discussion in which a student made a comment about how it was beneficial to take good ideas from both the right and left. The professor asked what good ideas the right had ever come up with. The entire class was stumped. I am still stumped.

Fundamentally, the right claims to be about preserving the status quo or restoring a previous status quo (which is often mythical). That's pretty much the dictionary definition of "conservatism". It's true that people like fascists or neoconservatives have radical ideas that don't exactly fit into this definition, but in effect they are just extreme implementations and are still framed in the same context of preserving/restoring a status quo. They are still of the right.

Do we live in a utopia? Conservatism makes sense in a utopia. Did we formerly live in a utopia? Conservatism makes sense as a project to restore a decayed utopia. Obviously the answer to both questions is no.

The world is a fucked up place and the only hope for improving it is progress, i.e. progressivism, i.e. the left. Now there is a lot of disagreement about how to make progress and what kind of progress to make and what the end state of progress is (and if there even is an end state) - but at the heart of it all the left is about finding ways improving the human condition. To me that makes a hell of a lot more sense than anything the right has ever advocated.