interfered with their matrix. His had been the loudest voice raised in disinterested opposition at the time, and perhaps the only one which carried serious intellectual weight. Over the succeeding decades, as philosophers attempted to set down their opposing interpretations of the event and therefore its long-term implications, the memory of Burkeâs non-conforming voice seemed to become louder and ever more annoying. At the height of the Western ideological split in the 1930s they simply locked him up as an anti-revolutionary voice on the Right.
That this meant discounting most of what he had said and written was a curious thing to do to a man whose life and considerable public power were based entirely on his words. âThe only way in which you can find Edmund Burke guilty of authoritarianism,â Conor Cruise OâBrien has written, âis by choosing to ignore everything he ever said, as a result of arbitrarily deciding that he didnât mean any of it.â 6
While Burke saw Americans as victims of the power held and abused by London, and while he continued to lead the movement in England which supported their cause, he also resisted the colonial opposition to the Quebec Act. Americans hated it because it gave citizensâ rights to the French-Canadian Catholics. They hated the idea that any power would be given to a rival religion and language.
Subsequent mythology has presented the colonial revolt as a simple affirmation of citizensâ rights, but the short list of American demands always included the removal of the rights of another group of citizens to the north. Burke also opposed a move to give the Americans representation in Westminster because it would have meant seating elected slave-owners.
Two decades later, when he wasâaccording to twentieth-century ideologuesâacting like a man of the Right by opposing the French Revolution, Burke was also working and voting with a small minority in parliament to abolish the slave trade. Through much of this period he was pursuing an exhausting campaign to see Warren Hastings punished for his violence, autocracy, racism and corruption in India. His efforts won him formal admiration, but also profound enmity in most circles of power for having stood in the way of Englandâs raison dâétat . London wanted control of India by whatever means. Burke disturbed a façade of respectable action by forcing parliament to deal with India and the Indians as a real place and real people.
The theme that ran through each of these Burkian interventions was his opposition to the abuse of power, particularly dressed up as an intellectual abstraction, and his belief that some sort of public equilibrium was possible. He did not propose as an alternative either unlimited individual right or the religion of the market-place.
The NEO-CONSERVATIVEsâ claim that Burke is their inspiration can be dealt with by reading a few of his words while thinking of their market and social Darwinism:
Freedom is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish Liberty. As if every Man was to regulate the whole of the Conduct by his own will. The Liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which Liberty is secured by the equality of Restraint⦠This kind of Liberty is indeed but another name for Justiceâ¦but whenever a separation is made between Liberty and Justice, neither is, in my opinion, safe. 7
Most of those who today claim to be his spiritual descendants are precisely the sort of people he spent his whole life fighting. If he could be brought back to life to meet with his current disciples, the probability is that he would refuse to sit down in the same room with them.
Burkeâs argumentsâhis definitions of ethics and valuesâremain central to the events that have shaped our struggles over communism, capitalism, justice, nationalism, colonialism and religious freedom. If, as many believe, the standard arguments used
That this meant discounting most of what he had said and written was a curious thing to do to a man whose life and considerable public power were based entirely on his words. âThe only way in which you can find Edmund Burke guilty of authoritarianism,â Conor Cruise OâBrien has written, âis by choosing to ignore everything he ever said, as a result of arbitrarily deciding that he didnât mean any of it.â 6
While Burke saw Americans as victims of the power held and abused by London, and while he continued to lead the movement in England which supported their cause, he also resisted the colonial opposition to the Quebec Act. Americans hated it because it gave citizensâ rights to the French-Canadian Catholics. They hated the idea that any power would be given to a rival religion and language.
Subsequent mythology has presented the colonial revolt as a simple affirmation of citizensâ rights, but the short list of American demands always included the removal of the rights of another group of citizens to the north. Burke also opposed a move to give the Americans representation in Westminster because it would have meant seating elected slave-owners.
Two decades later, when he wasâaccording to twentieth-century ideologuesâacting like a man of the Right by opposing the French Revolution, Burke was also working and voting with a small minority in parliament to abolish the slave trade. Through much of this period he was pursuing an exhausting campaign to see Warren Hastings punished for his violence, autocracy, racism and corruption in India. His efforts won him formal admiration, but also profound enmity in most circles of power for having stood in the way of Englandâs raison dâétat . London wanted control of India by whatever means. Burke disturbed a façade of respectable action by forcing parliament to deal with India and the Indians as a real place and real people.
The theme that ran through each of these Burkian interventions was his opposition to the abuse of power, particularly dressed up as an intellectual abstraction, and his belief that some sort of public equilibrium was possible. He did not propose as an alternative either unlimited individual right or the religion of the market-place.
The NEO-CONSERVATIVEsâ claim that Burke is their inspiration can be dealt with by reading a few of his words while thinking of their market and social Darwinism:
Freedom is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish Liberty. As if every Man was to regulate the whole of the Conduct by his own will. The Liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which Liberty is secured by the equality of Restraint⦠This kind of Liberty is indeed but another name for Justiceâ¦but whenever a separation is made between Liberty and Justice, neither is, in my opinion, safe. 7
Most of those who today claim to be his spiritual descendants are precisely the sort of people he spent his whole life fighting. If he could be brought back to life to meet with his current disciples, the probability is that he would refuse to sit down in the same room with them.
Burkeâs argumentsâhis definitions of ethics and valuesâremain central to the events that have shaped our struggles over communism, capitalism, justice, nationalism, colonialism and religious freedom. If, as many believe, the standard arguments used
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