"A Kinship Of Sensibility" With Defenders Of Slavery And Child Labor

Well, you can't accuse John Derbyshire of being shy of controversy. He is, in fact, admirably honest in both his refusal to articulate a reason for conservative resistance to change and his conviction that it's still right. What he does not do is what Burke did: articulate a moment when conservatives embrace change, because resisting it is more destructive to a society's coherence than embracing it. That's a prudential question. In my view, on marriage, the moment for conservative embrace of this social reform was in the last decade.