Either these rightwingers dont have a clue that their ideas are dangerous and deeply counterproductive, or they do, which makes them sociopaths because they dont care who or what they harm in their quest for wealth and power. There was a time in this country when most, not all, but most people believed we were all in this together and they understood things that were once at the heart of even conservative philosophy. Below is a favorite passage of mine from David Orrs exceptional book the Nature of Design: Ecology, Culture and Human Intention. I find almost no trace of this understanding or belief in what passes for conservatism today and not a trace in todays Republican Party. This is from the chapter titled Conservation and Conservatism: Eighteenth-century British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke, the founding father of modern conservatism and as much admired as he is unread, defined the goal of order more specifically as one which harmonized the distant past with the distant future. To this end Burke thought in terms of a contract, but not one about things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. Burkes societal contract was not, in other words, about tax breaks for those who dont need them, but about a partnership promoting science, art, virtue, and perfection, none of which could be achieved by a single generation without veneration for the past and a healthy regard for those to follow. Burkes contract, therefore, was between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born . . . linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world. The role of government, those possessing any portion of power, in Burkes words, ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust. For Burke, liberty in this contractual state is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish Liberty. As if every man was to regulate the whole of his conduct by his own will. Rather, he defined liberty as social freedom. It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 18:54:34 +0000
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