There are two main lines of argument against traditionalism. The first is that it is so vague that it is hardly possible to disagree with and that consequently it does not have any substantial content. The conservative is not opposed to change as such and absolutely, but rather to large and sudden or violent change. But how great does a change have to be to be unacceptably large? Again, conservatives admit that large political changes may be needed to cope with large changes of social or natural circumstances. The same vagueness, it may be argued, is present here.
This is an objection which conservatives should meet by agreeing with it, rather than seeking to rebut it. The vagueness complained of, the conservative could reply, is inevitable, the future course of events cannot be predicted and so cannot be prepared for in specific and detailed terms. The conservative response to novelty must be a matter of judgement, based on experience, not a business of the application of a set of rigid principles.
The critic could argue further that circumstantial changes, for the most part the outcome of technological progress, have very greatly increased in magnitude in recent times, as shown by huge increases in population, in the destructiveness of weapons, in damaging pressure on resources and the natural environment. This is harder for the conservative to deal with, suggesting as it does the anachronistic character of inherited political wisdom. But he could reply that the conservative method of dealing with change, by continuous, gradual steps, is better than confronting it with vast speculative schemes.
The other main argument against conservative traditionalism is that it is inconsistent since it now endorses political and legal arrangements which it strenuously resisted when they were first proposed—the emancipation of Catholics and Jews, the enlargement of the franchise to the unpropertied and women, the reduction of the monarchy to a merely ceremonial status and the political marginalization of the House of Lords, to take only British examples.
The conservative could reply that there is no inconsistency, the high social cost of absorbing these political innovations, which would not have been called for if they had been introduced more gradually, has now been paid. They are now themselves a part of the customary, established political fabric. But one may wonder if they would ever have come about at all if they had not been forced through against conservative opposition.
(Anthony Quinton, "Conservatism," chap. 9 in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit, Blackwell Companions to Philosophy [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1993], 244-68, at 261-2)
