EDMUND BURKEThis blog will comment on the affairs of the day from a Burkean perspective. Edmund Burke is generally considered the progenitor of conservatism, but in fact he was both a conservative and a liberal. I believe that in our troubled age of hyperpartisanship Burke offers us something of bridge between at least some liberals and conservatives.
Edmund Burke was, in fact, a reformer. Where there was injustice -- to Catholics in England, to black slaves in the Britain's Caribbean colonies, to the native population in British-controlled India -- he sought to cure it. But Burke was a careful reformer. He believed that a nation's culture, traditions, and instititions evolve over time because they serve that nation and its society well, and in ways that are not always obvious. It's important to be forearmed with as deep an understanding of the nation's history and culture as possible. Still, it is possible to know only so much. The individual is foolish but the species is wise, Burkeans like to say. (Burke's actual quote is not quite so pithy.)