Monday, March 12, 2007

Burke as Politician

In the ongoing operation of trying to salvage a worthwhile conservativism out of the Bush years, Brad DeLong makes an argument about Edmund Burke that is very important.

It's very convenient to invoke a cardboard Burke, complete with easily summarised key concepts; both liberals and conservatives do so. It doesn't match up well with the messy tangle of Burke's writings, though. Far too much weight has been given to the canonical conservative Burke--the great defender of institutions and national culture!--and far too little weight has been given to the canny, inconsistant, situational Burke.

A couple of paragraphs from DeLong's post, then (I know he won't mind the cutting and pasting):
When Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France makes the argument that Britons should respect the organic political tradition of English liberty that has been inherited from the past, he whispers under his breath that the only reason we should respect the Wisdom of the Ancestors is that in this particular case Burke thinks that the Ancestors--not his personal ancestors, note--were wise.

Whenever Burke thought that the inherited political traditions were not wise, the fact that they were the inherited Wisdom of the Ancestors cut no ice with him at all. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that they would conquer, torture, and rob wogs whenever and wherever they were strong enough to do so. That tradition cut no ice with Edmund Burke when he was trying to prosecute Warren Hastings. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that all power flowed to Westminster. That tradition cut no ice with Burke when he was arguing for conciliation with and a devolution of power to the American colonists. It was one of the traditions and institutions of Englishmen that Ireland was to be plundered and looted for the benefit of upwardly-mobile English peers-to-be. That tradition, too, cut no ice with Burke.

[...]

What are good institutions? Burke sounds like Madison: checks-and-balances, separation of powers, rights of the subject, limitations on the state. Burke's views on what good institutions are are Enlightenment views--that branch of the Enlightenment that took people as they are and politics as a science, that is, rather than the branch that took people as Rousseau hoped they might someday be and politics as the striking of an oppositional pose. Because he finds that the English past is usable as a support for his Enlightenment-driven views, Burke makes conservative arguments in Reflections. But whenever conservative arguments lead where Burke doesn't want to go--to Richelieu or Louis XIV or the plunder of Ireland or the Star Chamber or Warren Hastings or imperial centralization--Burke doesn't make them. England's inheritance of institutions and practices is to be respected wherever it supports Burke's conception of properly-ordered liberty, and ignored wherever it does not.
Yes, I think this gets very near to what coherent political principle there is in Burke.

28 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous:

Why, yes, that's about right. Although Tim Burke's comment, that what we take from Burke is the superiority of organic change not forced too fast, is a good one.

3/13/2007 05:17:00 PM  
Blogger Marilee Scott:

Burke's valuation of organicity can be overstated, though. He was quick to invoke it, sure, but he was inconsistent in its application. That there is a built-in resistance (cultural, institutional, even geographical) to sudden change is an excellent lesson, true enough.

3/13/2007 11:51:00 PM  
Blogger Russell Arben Fox:

You might be interested in some corrections and challenges Jacob T. Levy makes to DeLong's (mis)characterization of Burke in that same thread, or here on his blog (scroll down a little).

3/14/2007 12:31:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous:

I noticed those but was unconvinced.

3/14/2007 01:23:00 PM  
Blogger Marilee Scott:

Yes, I looked at those. DeLong probably goes too far in his dismissal of Burkean conservatism (that last paragraph in his post is unhelpful), but I do think that DeLong's emphasis on Burke's slipperiness is appropriate. Levy's insistance on Burke's respect for procedure seems a little strange, given Burke's parliamentary history.

3/14/2007 01:24:00 PM  
Blogger Doug M.:

There is a funny idealistic streak in Burke.

Yah, I know -- we don't much see "idealistic" and "Burke" in one sentence. But it's true. Burke squared the circle of "reverence for the Ancestors" and "condemning evil practices" by screwing around with history and constructing Ancestors who were artificially good and wise. (I am simplifying, but that's the gist.) In a sense, he anticipated the 19th century, when nationalist historians in every country (and Whig historians in Britain) would play fast and loose with historical narratives.

But when he can't pull this trick is when the idealism creeps in. Burke had a broad streak of "we should be better than this". It's not Romantic or Rousseau-ian, at all -- it's more like Norman Mailer howling, "The shits are killing us!"

It's where Burke's bitterness comes from. He didn't believe that man was born good, but he didn't think we had to be *that* bad.


Doug M.

3/29/2007 02:06:00 PM  
Blogger Marilee Scott:

Anticipated the 19th century? Hell, he helped create it! Political theorists dramatically underestimate the influence of Burke's aesthetics. I'm not talking about his contribution to aesthetics in philosophy (though the impact there wasn't negligable) so much as his influence on culture: landscape design, the gothic novel, gender roles, hell, he even wrote most of one of the early post-Addison English periodicals. His imagination loomed gigantically over British Romanticism, which in turn loomed over a lot of the continent's cultural production.

(I agree with you about his idealism.)

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