In his wonderful essay defending what he calls “small-c conservatism,” Cohen advocates a “bias in favor of existing value” (p. 210), by which he means that we should regret the destruction of particular valuable things as such, even when it would lead to their replacement by things of greater value.1, 2 He thinks that “everyone who is sane” (p. 204) has this bias to some degree, and that it is “rational and right” (p. 210) that they should.
