The marriage of markets and morals

Our institutions are constantly evolving and so we are faced with a challenge, a promise and a responsibility. The challenge is to join the eternal task of critical appraisal and piecemeal reform, the promise is the hope of unending progress and the responsibility is to maintain those institutions and traditions that have continuing value. There has been an unfortunate division of labour, so liberals of the classical and left-leaning kind have tended to take on the tasks of change while conservatives have shouldered the responsibility for maintenance. And the hope of progress, which has provided so much inspiration for liberals of all kinds, has been corrupted by theories of inevitability, which undermined personal responsibility, and by utopian fantasies which have prompted appalling episodes of fanaticism.