18th Century politician and sort-of philosopher, Edmund Burke has been getting some mention from conservatives and counter-mention from liberals these days. Cosa Nostradamus does a pretty nice take down of this patron saint of conservatism. A sample:
Burke claimed that Englishmen’s liberties were not created by or won with their own unique individual hearts and minds but came from merely being born English; from tradition and ancient legal documents and not from any new declarations or manifestos based on new realities. Burke was a strict constructionist; a fundamentalist. In his mind, freedom was a gift from the past, not a product of our own labors in the present. And only Englishmen were entitled to English liberties, there being no universal rights of man or connections between men of different nations, according to Burke, or Scalia today.
It was Burke who wrote, “We fear God, we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility.” A real boot-licking, cap-doffing, forelock-tugging ass-kisser. And good at it, too.
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Thanks for the link.
The irony is that Burke was the quintessential anti-ideologue and anti-extremist. He’d be horrified by today’s “conservatives.” They’re like the worst of the Jacobins.
He was also a Brit to the core, and the complete opposite of an American. To follow him is to move away from America.
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