Today's Political Debate

2017 review by Bruce Frohnen of a book on Burke and Paine written by Yuval Levin.

Here's the part of the review pertinent to today's angst:

 ...Mr. Levin is clear that he has, as he should, taken a side in the great debate. He sides with Burke, his suppositions, his goals, and his view of the person and the social order, over Paine. It is easy today to dismiss Burke’s politics as too rooted in history, too accepting of existing injustices, and too hostile toward demands for change. It is easy to do so because the language of politics has in large measure become the language of Paine. But this language also is the language of abstraction, of simplification, and of power. For Paine, in his drive for justice and individual freedom, sought to construct a politics rooted in the individual and the demand for equality here and now. Political structures were to be reshaped to make them democratic and to make them capable of remaking society so that it would be friendlier toward the demands of individuals seeking their own good on the basis of their own, unfettered reason. Paine experienced how the drive for such a radical transformation, and such a radical rejection of the institutions, beliefs, and practices inherited from those who went before us and believed they were leaving an inheritance for those who would come after us, led to mass murder in the French Revolution. But he remained convinced that only a forceful re-founding of society on the consent (however gleaned) of the people taken as an (undefined) whole could be just and could lead to justice. He followed his own reasoning to its logical conclusion: promotion of a secular state seeking to free individuals from want, from the past, and from the confines of the social order. Succeeding revolutions and their aftermaths have shown how bloody and enervating such a program is. Yet the political left continues to insist that these are the only true principles, and that we try again and again to put them into action, whatever the consequences, because this is the only just and caring way to proceed.

Burke, meanwhile, insisted that order is the first need of all, that it begins in the soul, and that the soul is shaped through normative education rooted in society seen as an inheritance we must preserve and hand on to later generations. On this view, injustices must be addressed, and reforms made. But this must be done with an eye toward ameliorating abuses in a manner that preserves the functioning of society and the ability of people to go about their lives with an assurance of stability and the support of the cultural institutions and norms necessary for any good life.

So what is the matter with Paine's demand for 'simple justice NOW!!'?

 ...What is lost in the demand for abstract justice, now, is the very process of pursuing the good in common with our fellows. And, having lost that process, we also lose the associations in which we once pursued the good. Our families, churches, and local associations lose their reasons for being as the state takes over the tasks of tending the sick, the needy, the powerless, and the general public. And the result is a society in which the individual is left alone, fending for himself in the face of life’s tragedies and, more dangerously, in the face of a government convinced that it knows best and that opposition to its will means intolerable opposition to the will of The People....

Well, we have seen that in the Left's operating style during Covid.  But at the same time, that "Justice NOW!!!" noise is being made by the Trumpists.  Let's hope that Trump's populism does not descend into the same madness as did the Left's.

Levin is not without controversy, and the following tells you why:

 ...one may quibble with Mr. Levin[ ]on some points. He consistently refers to modern liberal government as the government all of us have and must preserve. He sees Burke and Paine as merely two approaches to the only viable public philosophy, liberalism. Yet Western civilization has within it many more, and more powerful, defenses for human liberty and dignity than liberalism. From the leap in being at Mount Sinai, when God (rather than Hammurabi or some other ruler) handed down Commandments for order in the soul and in the commonwealth, there was begun a higher law tradition that placed law above rulers, to be interpreted by judges rather than imposed by men standing in as gods. Within the Anglo-American tradition, the fight against King John’s arbitrary actions brought Magna Carta and, over time, a tradition of limited, constitutional government. None of this was necessarily “liberal” in any meaningful sense....

... But, as Burke’s work shows, the trend toward individualism without community, reason without history, rights without obligations, and a state whose basis in putative consent leaves no room for culture and society to serve as the grounding for the good life produces liberty only in the narrow sense, a sense hostile to the flourishing of the person and the lasting, ordered liberty essential thereto....

Read that again:

 ...the trend toward individualism without community, reason without history, rights without obligations, and a state whose basis in putative consent leaves no room for culture and society to serve as the grounding for the good life produces liberty only in the narrow sense, a sense hostile to the flourishing of the person and the lasting, ordered liberty essential thereto....

Yah, life and governing is complex, not simple--as Paine would like it.