A common fallacy:

1. Trait/Institution X has varied historically.
2. Historical variation suggests changeability in X.
3. Some changeability suggests greater changeability.
∴ X can be made (well) into anything.

2 is false insofar as it is used to exclude from possibility changes that merely *covered over* something rather than actually changed it. For instance, you could well stipulate by law that all straight men become gay men on fear of punishment, and they might well so behave, but this would not indicate change *proper* to the men. For they would simply be what they were before the edict playing the part of something else. It is possible to deny this and say 'A man is what he does.' but that seems to deny too much, including personal integrity and most straightforward forms of alienation and false consciousness that even the far-left would want to preserve.

3 is false insofar as it is hyperbolic, but the conservative often goes too far in trying to resist it. It is not that man simple *is* what he normally is full stop with no variance but nor is it thus the case that man might be anything. Consider that human nature might provide for a kind of flexibility, and that one and the same man might be changed to savage or civilized in the right circumstances. It's just that "civilized" is not as great a transformation of the savage as is often presupposed, and this possibility is properly resident in human nature rather than a total transformation of it.