An enormous portion of Burke's (and the conservative) worldview becomes clearer in light of the importance he places on the basic facts and character of human procreation, and an enormous portion of Paine's (and the progressive) worldview becomes clearer in light of the desire he evinces to be liberated from the implications of those facts and that character. Almost all of what we loosely call "the social issues" have to do with the dispute about whether such liberation is possible and desirable and, because it raises the question of the relation between generations, that dispute also shapes a surprising portion of our other prominent debates. Burke takes the human person to be embedded in a web of obligations that give shape to our lives.

Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, p. 103

Edmund Burke on the oppression of the minority in a democratic system:

Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority; whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single scepter. In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable condition than any other.

Qtd. in Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

Equality itself should not be a primary goal of politics. Social peace, prosperity, and stability are more important for everyone, and are often not well served by the pursuit of equality--especially because true social equality is ultimately an unachievable goal. 

"The idea of forcing every thing to an artificial equality has something, at first view, very captivating in it," Burke writes. "It has all the appearance imaginable of justice and good order; and very many persons, without any sort of partial purposes, have been led to adopt such schemes and to pursue them with great earnestness and warmth." But it is ultimately both misguided and impractical. "Believe me, sir," he writes in the Reflections, "those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost." The only question is which element will predominate, and in a society that makes leveling and equalizing its central principle, the great middle will tend to predominate, overpowering both the rich and the poor. But this middle, especially in a society focused on equalizing, will be badly suited to rule. "The levelers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things. They load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The association of tailors and carpenters, of which the republic (of Paris, for instance) is composed, cannot be equal to the situation into which, by the worst usurpations, an usurpation of the prerogatives of nature, you attempt to force them."

As this passage demonstrates, for Burke the question of political equality--or of who has the right to rule--is even more important than that of social or economic quality. In a society with an egalitarian idea of rule, there will not be true equality, but rather a disorderly rule by the unfit. Because it will organize itself around an idea of equality that it can never truly achieve, such a society will also always be in disarray and flux. The idea of eliminating all social distinctions in society, Burke argues, is a "monstrous fiction, which by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men designed to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality, which it can never remove . . . 

Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

An enormous portion of the conservative worldview becomes clearer when we see the importance this view places on cultural continuity as a function of generational transmission—on the inescapable responsibilities human procreation imposes on each generation. An enormous portion of the progressive worldview becomes clearer when we see the degree to which it is shaped by a desire to be liberated from these obligations—and from the implications of the basic facts and character of human procreation. Many of what we loosely call the “social issues” in our politics involve debates about whether such a liberation is possible or desirable—whether the word choice can be poured like an acid over traditional social arrangements, burning all links of obligation and duty and making responsibility merely optional.

Yuval Levin, "The Roots of a Reforming Conservatism"