Always wise for conservatives to remember the words of the Old Whig himself, Edmund Burke: “To innovate is not to reform.”

As for conservatives, libertarians, and the state, I think it is also useful for conservatives to remember that when a reform is needed, the reform can more then not often be destructive of state power rather than constructive. Far too often government puts in place barriers, disincentives and inhibitors to better solutions that can originate from the ingenuity of civil society. Get rid of those, and the solutions will start to flow. Moreover, as Hayek noted, conservatism (narrowly defined in the sense of his time and place), without this whiggish streak, cannot give us guiding principles for needed reform. Hayek notes that American conservatism is whiggish by its very nature. The British conservative party changed from being a defender of aristocratic privilege to something much greater when it merged with the Liberal Unionists. A retreat from this strand of conservative thought is, to my mind, distinctly unconservative.