In the debate about the need for “change,” conservatives appeared to take the position that change itself was either not necessary or they appeared to long back for a time that never was: American conservatives especially have the somewhat strange idea that there was a time once when all was lovely and well, and if only we would change society back, turn back the clock of time as it were, we too would live in such a wonderful (mostly) society.

Those two views of change, opposing change because all change is considered bad and wanting to bring radical change in a desperate attempt to mimic the past, are both in contradiction with Burkean conservatism, which is the conservatism Anglo-Saxons adhere to, and many continental Europeans do as well.

In his masterwork “The Conservative Mind,” Russell Kirk explains what the Burkean view on change is. Liberals, moderates and modern conservatives would be wise to keep Kirk’s and Burke’s lessons in mind whenever they contemplate bringing or opposing changes to society:

Burke has no expectation that men can be kept from social change; neither is rigidity of form desirable. Change is inevitable, he says, and is designed providentially for the larger conservation of society; properly guided, change is a process of renewal. But let change come as the consequence of a need generally felt, not inspired by fine-spun abstractions. Our part is to patch and polish the old order of things, trying to discern the difference between a profound, slow, natural alternation and some infatuation of the hour. By and large, change is a process independent of conscious human endeavor, if it is beneficial change. Human reason and speculation can assist in the adjustment of the old order to new things if they are employed in a spirit of reverence, awake to their own fallibility. Even ancient prejudices and prescriptions must sometimes shrink before the advance of positive knowledge; but the Jacobin mind is unable to distinguish between minor inconvenience and actual decrepitude. The perceptive reformer combines and ability to reform with a disposition to preserve; the man who loves change is wholly disqualified, from his lust, to be the agent of change.

And Burke himself wrote in a letter to Sir Hercules Langrische “on the Catholics” (1792):

WE must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may be in change, without any of the inconveniences of mutation. This mode will, on the one hand, prevent the unfixing old interests at once: a thing which is apt to breed a black and sullen discontent in those who are at once dispossessed of all their influence and consideration. This gradual course, on the other hand, will prevent men, long under depression, from being intoxicated with a large draught of new power, which they always abuse with a licentious insolence.

Change will come, change has to come, but let it come gradually and let those who bring change be aware of the terrible responsibility they have to preserve the good and wise.