Burke and Paine, a Rivalry That Still Reveraberates. By Michael Gerson. Real Clear Politics, February 11, 2014. Also at the Washington Post.
Gerson:
One of
the most vivid, outspoken conservatives of our time has the drawback of being a
fictional character in a British costume drama, “Downton Abbey.” Here is Lady
Violet, dowager countess, sparring with her relentlessly progressive in-law,
Isobel Crawley:
Lady
Violet: “You are quite wonderful, the way you see room for improvement wherever
you look. I never knew such reforming zeal.”
Isobel:
“I take that as a compliment.”
Lady
Violet: “I must have said it wrong.”
One of
America’s leading young interpreters of British conservatism, Yuval Levin, has
written a book detailing a more consequential historical version of the contest
between preservation and radical reform. In “The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left,” Levin tells the story of an
unfriendly rivalry between the progenitors of modern conservatism and modern
liberalism. In the time Burke and Paine shared — the late 18th century —
philosophical arguments could ignite revolutions, and pamphlets could be as
important as battles. Both Burke and Paine were masters of political rhetoric
at a time when political rhetoric really mattered, and their rivalry still
reverberates.
Levin
praises Paine for his ability “to bring even modestly educated readers into
contact with profound philosophical questions.”
It
happens to be Levin’s talent as a writer as well. Paine emerges as a restless,
homeless agitator for liberty, convinced that governments should be torn down
and rebuilt according to rational enlightenment principles. “Government by
precedent,” argued Paine, is “one of the vilest systems that can be set up.”
Burke, in contrast, proposed to “make the most of the existing materials of his
country.” Demonstrating Burke’s own gift for epigram, Levin observes, “The best
kind of political change, in Burke’s view, builds on what is best about the
given world to improve what is worst about it.”
Levin
gives both great thinkers their due. But this cannot conceal the fact that
Paine’s greatest political hope proved to be a horror, and Burke’s greatest fear turned out to be a prophecy. Burke argued that the triumph of Paine’s
enlightenment ideology in the French Revolution would unmoor men and women from
tradition, habit and moral restraint. A revolt in the name of liberty alone
quickly turned against liberty itself, producing both the Terror and Bonaparte.
Burke’s
prediction was swiftly and completely vindicated.
But the
complex story Levin tells offers plenty of correctives for conservatives as
well — including on the nature of conservatism itself. Burke would not have
been comfortable among the Lady Violets of his day — the Tory conservatives of
crown and altar. Instead, Burke was a Whig and a reformer who criticized the
British war against America, pushed for Catholic rights, opposed the exercise
of unjust colonial power in India and was an early critic of slavery. He was
also a social outsider, set off by his red hair, his Irish accent and his
Catholic mother, sister and wife.
Modern
politics emerged as an argument between two sorts of Whigs, meaning two sorts
of liberals — what Levin terms “progressive liberalism” and “conservative
liberalism.” Both were distinctly modern movements. Both accepted liberalism’s
commitments to liberty and reform. But they differed dramatically on how reform
should be achieved. One was the party of radical liberation through revolution,
which supported the French Revolution even after its violence emerged.
The
other was the party of gradual progress.
In a typical
illuminating flash of insight, Levin compares these divisions of ideology to
branches of science. Paine’s approach is more similar to Newtonian physics —
the application of rational, abstract laws and scientific methods to remake
society. The past, in this view, is a dead hand. The individual must be
liberated from superstitions and unchosen obligations. Burke’s politics are
more like evolutionary theory — moving by gradual mutations and reflecting the
inherited wisdom of the species. Human beings, in this view, live in a complex
web of social relationships that preexist us and outlast us.
And
government should protect and strengthen these structures rather than rip them
up according to abstract theories of liberty.
Levin
finds these conflicting visions — between politics as physics and politics as
evolution — reflected in modern arguments between left and right. And the
author, though a fair-minded historian, is not neutral in the great debate. He
seeks the reconstitution of a communitarian conservatism that takes the need
for reform seriously rather than offering pure opposition. That is a Burkean
task — in which Levin is increasingly playing a Burkean role.
Distorting Russia. By Stephen F. Cohen. The Nation, February 11, 2014. From the March 3, 2014 issue.
