'The kind of liberal conservatism David Cameron espouses is a mishmash of the good and bad, and is completely divorced from Christian spirituality' (PA) |
Ed West’s review of Jesse Norman’s biography of Edmund Burke in the Herald of August 2 gives tantalising glimpses of the great conservative thinker and makes me want to know Burke better, not just his supposed remark, not found in his writings, “Evil flourishes when good men do nothing”.
West comments that “until the French Revolution, Burke was not
recognisably ‘Right-Wing’, as it would later be called. He supported
Catholic emancipation and argued in favour of conciliation with the
American colonies. Burke was not against all change, just extreme
change.” He quotes Norman’s interpretation of Burke’s political
viewpoint, “For radical change to be genuinely worthwhile, it must bring
overwhelming social benefit, or be the product of the most extreme
necessity.”
Conservatism means preserving institutions of permanent value – such
as the institution of marriage between a man and a woman; and being
cautiously open to change when it is clearly an organic process, not
imposed from outside – such as the development of the trade union
movement. The trouble is that today in the UK, people of conservative
persuasion do not have a voice or a political party; as a letter by CM
Williams in yesterday’s Telegraph put it: “Mr Cameron is planning for
defeat at the coming election, which will herald even more social
democratic policies. Where are true Conservatives to go?”
Read more at The Catholic Herald >>
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