“Men, I still think, ought to be weighed not counted. Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their value.” – Coleridge.
The philosophical Conservative: “The man who works out a consistent and timeless generalization applying to the behavior of men in politics.”
This quote comes from Crane Brinton, courtesy of my dog-eared copy of Russel Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, which includes the other two definitions Brinton distinguished; the conservative of the dictionary, who accepts things as they are, and the conservative who, contemptuous of his changing times, idealizes the past.
The Left, be they either the dogmatic or the pragmatic genus– the latter being a rhetorical narrative designed by the dogmatic left to confuse people into thinking that the Progressives are not actually all a bunch of commie-pinko wealth-levelers obsessed with socialist/Marxist redistribution, would like the majority of people most likely to be fooled by the word pragmatism to think all conservatives are the sort that are contemptuous of changing times, and idealize the past.
On the contrary. Most of us are…”The man (or woman) who works out a consistent and timeless generalization applying to the behavior of men in politics.”
Put another way, evil exists in all mens hearts (yes, women too) and without a moral or at least limiting counterweight (which no government of man will ever provide or sustain willingly) even the most well meaning public servant, left unchecked, can find a path to tyranny, and that history has already taught us every lesson we need to know to prevent it.
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