The \u201crevolution\u201d that began in Egypt and that is now spreading across the Middle East has many a Westerner, and even more Americans, smiling.\u00a0 Those who supported President Bush\u2019s \u201cFreedom Agenda\u201d are now crediting the former visionary for setting in motion the domino effect that, they are convinced, promises to bring \u201cDemocracy\u201d to the Islamic world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At this time we would be well served to revisit the thought of the one thinker who is about as widely respected, if not revered, by all self-professed \u201cconservatives\u201d as anyone: Edmund Burke, the recognized \u201cfather\u201d of modern conservatism.<\/p>\n
Burke was no admirer of revolution.\u00a0 Contrary to popular opinion, Burke didn\u2019t even support the American Revolution.\u00a0 It is true that he expressed no shortage of sympathy for the colonists, but he labored indefatigably to persuade them not to sever their ties with the Mother Country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Burke implored the colonists to resist those \u201cwho would alienate you from your dependence on the Crown and [the] parliament of this kingdom.\u201d\u00a0 He also went to great pains to remind them that, since the \u201cvery liberty, which you so justly prize above all things, originated here,\u201d in England, \u201cit may be very doubtful whether, without being constantly fed from the original fountain, it can be at all perpetuated or preserved in its native purity and perfection.\u201d\u00a0 This \u201cliberty\u201d that the colonists \u201cprize\u201d and that is bequeathed to them by England is nothing more or less than the English constitution, <\/em>a constitution, Burke worries, that neither \u201cnow, nor for ages,\u201d the colonists will be capable of sustaining \u201cin an independent state.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Notice, \u201cthe liberty\u201d around which Burke\u2019s discussion centers is not an abstraction but a concrete, culturally-specific complex of arrangements that he identifies as the English constitution.\u00a0 The colonists \u201care descendants of Englishmen\u201d who, as such, are \u201cdevoted\u2026to liberty according to English ideas and English principles.\u00a0 Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.\u201d\u00a0 They are also largely Protestant, <\/em>\u201cand of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion.\u201d\u00a0 Burke tells us that: \u201cAll Protestantism\u2026is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance: it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.\u201d<\/p>\n Burke\u2019s political philosophical suppositions are starkly at odds, not just with the views of those of his contemporaries with whom he did battle, but with the abstract metaphysics of most of our <\/em>contemporaries who call themselves \u201cconservative.\u201d\u00a0 The ideas of \u201cHuman Rights,\u201d \u201cGlobal Democracy,\u201d a \u201cPropositional Nation\u201d and the like he would have found, at the very least (and best), irrelevant to the art of governing.\u00a0<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t just the violence attending to revolution that Burke abhorred, but the metaphysics undergirding it.\u00a0 He insisted that while he loves a \u201cmanly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentlemen,\u201d he \u201ccannot\u2026give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions and human concern on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This is a crucial point.\u00a0 No one would anymore think to deny that \u201cliberty\u201d or \u201cfreedom\u201d is a good thing than they would think to deny that love is.\u00a0 But precisely because liberty is an abstract concept, it can and does admit of multiple and mutually incompatible conceptions. The French Revolutionaries who Burke castigated prized Liberty, and contemporary leftists\u2014including Marxists\u2014value it as well; yet their <\/em>idea of Liberty\u2014utopian and, thus, devoid of all context\u2014is obviously eons apart from Burke\u2019s.\u00a0 For that matter, Islam too affirms \u201cliberty\u201d as among the highest of goods, but true liberty, as far as it is concerned, is attainable only once Sharia law is imposed upon the whole world.\u00a0 That is, this conception of \u201cliberty\u201d is even further removed from Burke\u2019s view than the Marxist\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Egypt undergoes its transition to a new form of government, those self-identified \u201cconservatives\u201d who anticipate a new era in the Middle East and the furtherance of Bush\u2019s \u201cFreedom Agenda\u201d would do well for themselves to bear in mind Burke\u2019s warning regarding \u201cthe wild gas\u201d that is \u201cthe spirit of liberty.\u201d\u00a0 He beseeches us to \u201csuspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Burke reminds us that since \u201cliberty, when men act in bodies, is power,<\/em>\u201d and since \u201cthe liberty\u201d that the people of Egypt just found for themselves is \u201cnew <\/em>power in new <\/em>persons\u201d with \u201cwhose principles, tempers, and dispositions\u201d we \u201chave little or no experience,\u201d \u201cconsiderate people\u201d should first \u201cobserve the use which is made of power<\/em>\u201d before they congratulate a people for their new found \u201cliberty.\u201d<\/p>\n As the world\u2019s eyes are fixed upon Egypt and the Middle East, conservatives especially should take their \u201cpatron saint\u2019s\u201d words to heart.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The \u201crevolution\u201d that began in Egypt and that is now spreading across the Middle East has many a Westerner, and even more Americans, smiling.\u00a0 Those who supported President Bush\u2019s \u201cFreedom Agenda\u201d are now crediting the former visionary for setting in motion the domino effect that, they are convinced, promises to bring \u201cDemocracy\u201d to the Islamic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n