Conservatism rests on an enduring moral order, custom and continuity, prescription, prudence, variety, and distrust of human perfectibility.
Kirk's 1953 canons defined post-war American conservatism as a disposition rather than a programme. The sixth — distrust of human perfectibility — is the one that does the most argumentative work.
In practice
- A trustee argues against a governance change on grounds of continuity rather than outcome, and would make the same argument about a change she privately favoured.
- A profession's resistance to a new qualification route rests on prescription: the existing route has worked, and the burden is on the reformer.