Thread by @sunnshiiny

How many people are familiar with the following truth?

“Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.” ~ Edmund Burke

Most people assume Burke was referencing maintaining awareness of history to avoid sliding into autocracy.

He wasn’t. He was referencing the French Revolution. Where the common folk deposed the monarchy & noble classes. And redistributed wealth and resources more equitably.

In theory anyway (check out Robespierre).

Burke was a wealthy aristocrat. Afraid of losing his status, property and comfortable lifestyle.

And he was correct. When you don’t pay attention to current events & seek to understand them in contexts with past events, you’re doomed.

The French Revolution opened the door for other commoners to challenge the absolute power of monarchy. Along with its accompanying removal of the nobles and redistribution of their land and resources.

Most of Europe removed or curtailed absolute monarchies by mid 19th century.

The French Revolution started a literal social revolution where the common citizen refused absolute authority over their lives.

Burke was the architect who designed the system that preserved aristocratic power under threat of actual democracy.

So when you see that quote, you should understand the context in which it was made.

Burke was warning fellow aristocrats in the British Empire, that their future power and wealth hoarding was dependent upon designing a political system ...

... that functioned as a democracy to the observer, but actually maintained the established patriarchal hierarchy that gave aristocrats their power and wealth.

Edmund Burke is known as the father of modern conservatism. Stephen Harper is an ardent fan. So is Jason Kenney.

Burke revered the status quo of “ordered liberty” that venerated Christian faith and its morals based ideology, the established hierarchy and the desire to keep it that way.

That’s conservatism. That’s where conservative beliefs originate.

Burke was a Whig, a classic liberal. What we would recognize contemporaneously as a far right libertarian with strong connection to religious faith and morals.

Or more colloquially, a social conservative

But Burke’s observations are no less correct for modern citizens.

If you don’t know history, you’re doomed to repeat it. Because those with power aspirations who do study history will use history to inform contemporary political decisions.

Which they are.

While the public is mostly oblivious.

How many know the British Empire’s conquest of French Canada was the impetus for the American revolution in 1776? Taxes to cover the debt of war with France for control of Canada.

Burke was there. Arguing taxation was slavery.

theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/10/edmund…

So what is the ordered liberty Burke prescribes? What does it look like?

If you read Burke’s opines in the below screen shots, you’ll recognize the rhetoric. It’s still used today by modern conservatives. Ordered liberty, natural law, adherence to prudent status quo.

Modern conservatism is shaped by the philosophical struggle of one man’s personal rationale regarding liberty and moral restraint.

To Burke, liberty was only possible in a well defined moral environment.

Otherwise it was too dangerous to allow oneself to act freely.

He applied this philosophy to his own personal life, but petitioned for its adoption by the like minded to limit the liberty of advocates of actual independent thought.

Burke sought to restrict power and liberty to the privileged class.

Don’t let the dim anywhere near power.

He proclaimed the state incapable of proper wealth redistribution, and permanently assigned the underclasses to poverty, social immobility and ordered liberty.

The poor were savages, human capital to be kept from real power and left to their own defences or faith based charity.

This is paleolibertarianism.

Paleo meaning ancient or from a long ago past.

And libertarian meaning those who believe in self regulation, small govt, faith based morality constraints and free markets.

Except when Burke wrote about it, it wasn’t paleo. He developed the concepts to legitimize aristocratic power and to maintain it in the control of the elite few.

Burk’s philosophical reaction to the French Revolution has influenced millions of lives for quite a few centuries.

It wasn’t John A. MacDonald that shaped this nation, anymore than it was George Washington who shaped America.

It was the aristocratic fear, convinced of their own superiority, but recognizing freedom for all would limit their power to accumulate wealth & control politics.

JAM wasn’t a great man, or a great leader. He was a typical gentry class Scot protecting his and his peers economic & social power.

Encouraged by the writings of other men who recognized the power the commons actually possessed. Suppressing that power is called ORDERED LIBERTY.

We don’t need to “cancel” JAM.

We need to delegitimize the belief system that governance should be limited to the rich and powerful.

MacDonald is irrelevant. Kenney misdirects the rage of the commons by focussing on JAM.

He shouts “squirrel” & people start looking around.

Please stop chasing squirrels. Please stop proving Burke’s observation correct. Look up some history.

At least attempt to understand how and why conservatives are making a desperate claim of all authority and political power.

It’s because we WERE winning the war.

Progressives certainly aren’t winning now.

Most are extremely emotionally overwrought and reacting in vengeance without much critical thought. Like the mobs Robespierre used to “cancel” any dissenters to his radical liberty movement.

Declaring all who disagreed an enemy.

There’s a reason Burke was afraid. Robespierre was a power hungry despot himself.

Sure he advocated freedom for all. But he limited freedom to those who supported him fully.

Despots emerge from both ends of the spectrum.

An important lesson from the study of history.

Jacobins were the original cancel culture. Using populist rhetoric, they instituted The Terror that resulted in many unnecessary deaths.

Cancel culture on the left is along these same veins. The elimination of those who question self appointed enforcers of liberty.

The point is: learn your history. Your political beliefs weren’t developed out of thin air. Someone has carefully thought through them in the past, wrote them down and others propagated their widespread existence and they influence us today.

It’s not a horseshoe, it’s history.