Law will change, indeed, with the times; but arbitrary intervention in the process, rude revision upon abstract concepts a la French taste, is a short and nasty way to social caducity. When a people begin to think that they can improve society infinitely by incessant alteration of positive law, nothing remains settled; every right, every bit of property, every one of those dear attachments to the permanence of family, home, and countryside is endangered. Such a people soon presume themselves to be omnicompetent, and the farther their affairs fall into confusion, the more enthusiastic they become for some legislative panacea which promises to cut all knots in Gordian fashion.
Russell Kirk, writing of John Randolph
-The Conservative Mind
