On Liberty
AH from The American Federalist posed to me some questions regarding my rejection of the Bush Doctrine that I felt would best be addressed in their own post:
I'll explain further, but I need to lay I bit of foundation. I think Burke was right in his contention that the Britain and the Colonies were best served by a Conservatism bound by prescription, prudence and prejudice. In Burke's conservatism, Prescription is the adherence to things long established by custom and proved usage. Prudence is judging acts by their probable long-run consequences, not merely by what is contemporarily popular or advantageous in the short-term. Prejudice, as Burke explained it, is not bigotry but wise prejudgement based on intuition and ancestral consensus.
Every nation, culture and family is a current result of a long process of shared experiences. America's representative republic is a current result of one mildly divergent branch of Western Civilization that stands on the shoulders of many generations of familial and tribal shared experiences that define us as a people. The nations of Islam and all other nations that are sourced through religious shared ancestry have come to this point by their own paths.
And who are we, here only a relative instant, to say Providence is not at work within it all?
Burke is a good source for more detail:
It takes far more than a "taste of Liberty" for a people, a family, a tribe or a culture to adopt and elevate it. Considering the tenuous state of Liberty here in America, I won't buy in to romantic notions regarding how to birth or keep it. Liberty requires a deliberate stewardship for which many cultures probably lack the affinity to sustain. The Author of Liberty still has work to do here, so I see no need to ask Him to help us with fools errands elsewhere.
Technorati tags: Liberty
What weight do you assign to human nature? I enjoy your blog, but wonder if there's something fundamental about Humankind that supercedes governments of this world. I'd suggest that the Author of Liberty has written certain desires into human hearts, and that once these desires are entertained, there is no way that Liberty can long be suppressed. Experience will show us that when a people are given a taste of or for Liberty, the natural progression is for greater freedom.To me there is nothing in the fundamental nature of man that supercedes governments, human nature only precedes them. In the affairs of families, tribes and nations I assign the greatest weight to human nature; removed from the constraints of whatever civilization or culture from which he is born, man is an animal. Only over time, through the the shared experience of generations of venerated ancestors does a man within his resulting culture become Providentially greater than his nature.
I'll explain further, but I need to lay I bit of foundation. I think Burke was right in his contention that the Britain and the Colonies were best served by a Conservatism bound by prescription, prudence and prejudice. In Burke's conservatism, Prescription is the adherence to things long established by custom and proved usage. Prudence is judging acts by their probable long-run consequences, not merely by what is contemporarily popular or advantageous in the short-term. Prejudice, as Burke explained it, is not bigotry but wise prejudgement based on intuition and ancestral consensus.
Every nation, culture and family is a current result of a long process of shared experiences. America's representative republic is a current result of one mildly divergent branch of Western Civilization that stands on the shoulders of many generations of familial and tribal shared experiences that define us as a people. The nations of Islam and all other nations that are sourced through religious shared ancestry have come to this point by their own paths.
And who are we, here only a relative instant, to say Providence is not at work within it all?
Burke is a good source for more detail:
"A nation is not an idea only of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers, and in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or one set of people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of ages and of generations; it is a Constitution made by what is ten thousand times better than choice, it is made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time. It is a vestment, which accommodates itself to the body. Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind unmeaning prejudices-for man is a most unwise, and a most wise, being. The individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it almost always acts right."I consider any attempt to superimpose concepts born of our culture upon an alien culture that is the sum experience of a markedly different ancestral path to be incredibly arrogant. I believe that Providence is still at work within it all because we do not know His plan. However, I do not believe that experience will show us that "when a people are given a taste of or for Liberty, the natural progression is for greater freedom." Despite all of Ataturk's best intentions and innovations, Turkey is now devolving back to a less free, more authoritarian Islamic state. The Palestinian election of Hamas refutes the notion that Liberty is contagious there. Even Christian nations outside the West, particularly those in Latin America, have a marked propensity to supress liberty in favor of faddish causes based on abstract reason and innovative imagination.
It takes far more than a "taste of Liberty" for a people, a family, a tribe or a culture to adopt and elevate it. Considering the tenuous state of Liberty here in America, I won't buy in to romantic notions regarding how to birth or keep it. Liberty requires a deliberate stewardship for which many cultures probably lack the affinity to sustain. The Author of Liberty still has work to do here, so I see no need to ask Him to help us with fools errands elsewhere.
Technorati tags: Liberty
