As I said, stick around for the next election. If the bums get thrown out, keep on truckin'.
If not -- well, there's the introduction to that Burke speech on the Americans to refer to. See here: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/et...t04/
burke10.txt
I read the intro, but not the text itself. I find a lot to like in Burke and smile at the criticisms in the intro, not because we can't question him, but because they are offered in a somewhat dogmatic way. As an admirer of Burke I would ask, what is this privileged postion that gives you such certitude? Burke is not a terrible dogmatist, but suggests caution and incremental change. Calling that 'fearful' or even, as some do, 'reactionary' is a stretch to my eyes.
Interestingly, Burke was a Whig too. I guess that might qualify him as a 'classical liberal'?
Winston Churchill on Burke:
On the one hand [Burke] is revealed as a foremost apostle of Liberty, on the other as the redoubtable champion of Authority. But a charge of political inconsistency applied to this life appears a mean and petty thing. History easily discerns the reasons and forces which actuated him, and the immense changes in the problems he was facing which evoked from the same profound mind and sincere spirit these entirely contrary manifestations. His soul revolted against tyranny, whether it appeared in the aspect of a domineering Monarch and a corrupt Court and Parliamentary system, or whether, mouthing the watch-words of a non-existent liberty, it towered up against him in the dictation of a brutal mob and wicked sect. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, at defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other.
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