past = outside view

For example, if in the past people have repeatedly suggested a plan to create a paradise on Earth, and the plan, when realized, repeatedly ended with bloodshed and poverty, and now someone suggests the same plan again... I guess that's a reason to suspect it probably wouldn't end well. At the very least, the proponent should explain why exactly the previous instances have failed and what exactly they are planning to do differently today to avoid that specific failure.

But there is a difference between using the past as an outside view, i.e. conservatism; and worshipping the "past as my modern mind imagines it", i.e. neoconservatism / neoreaction. The latter is, ironically, in some aspects similar to the progressives who are worshipping the fictional future -- similar approach to modelling society, different aesthetics (or as you called it "positive / negative affiliation with the passage of time").