Edmund Burke
By
Tim Heydon
"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors" - Edmund Burke. (‘Reflections on the French Revolution’ Dent, 1955,(Everyman edition), p 31.)
Edmund Burke , the great conservative political philosopher of the era of the French Revolution, has been rejected by modern Toryism, There is much in Burke which nationalists might object to or would want to modify, such as the strength of his elitism.
Nevertheless, in many respects, including his rejection of ‘equality’ as against nature (‘A monstrous fiction’), his views and attitudes resonate with our own in a way that they don’t with Cameroonian Toryism and its fellow-travellers. We should claim him for ourselves as a key intellectual progenitor.
Whilst a conservative, Burke’s view of society is actually more modern because more realistic than that of the social engineers. For their vision is of a rationally ordered society which functions like some great well-oiled machine. It is a vision in which the life of humanity can be structured in manufactured states like the European Union by those with the power to do so. This vision of society as mechanistic and scientifically improvable derives ultimately from Newton’s view of the universe as operating like a machine through inflexible natural laws. This view had an overwhelming influence on the thinking of the French Revolutionaries and continues with ‘progressives’ today.
The State is not a Machine to be built by Leftist / Liberal Intellectuals. It is Organic
Burke, though, considered society to be ‘one family, one body, one heart and soul". It was not to be thought of as something to be ordered and structured in machine-like fashion. Rather it is organic. It is a living thing in which we the individuals are merely cells. Thus while the individual may die, the larger body carries on. So we must never reject tradition because this represents the ancient wisdom of our race. It is the fruit of the empirical experience of the ages; it is what works.
We should always distrust abstract reason, of the sort indulged in by the liberal /leftist ‘intellectual’ social engineers of our day, because "the individual is foolish. The multitude is foolish; but the species is wise....as a species it almost always acts right' (Works and Correspondence, vol X, (1852), p 97).
Our rights are not dreamt up from some abstract principle but are inherited from our ancestors (ie are inherent in our ethnicity) and it is for us to transmit them to our posterity. ’We have," Burke said, "an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and a house of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors." Indeed, "it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right."
Burke’s organic view of the state /society fits in very nicely with a modern view of the universe as, not static in a Newtonian sense, but where even galaxies and perhaps the universe itself are born, live and die in an organic rather than in an unchanging mechanistic fashion. It is also more in keeping with a universe in which events are the result of the emerging possibilities of Quantum Physics rather than Newtonian determinism. Burke’s organic opinion of society; his view of the generations owing obligations to each other and his references to ‘the race’ as integral to society seems to assume an essentially ethnic perspective well in keeping with nationalist thinking.
Remembering Burke as Britain Burns
Modern society views the past as obsolete. It is an encumbrance to the future. Dynamic change must destroy the old to build the new in what Burke called "a liberal descent." He warned of "unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos" and demanded respect for institutions on the same grounds as for men: "on account of their age and on account of those from whom they are descended".
Society is a Contract between the Living, the Dead and the Unborn.
Burke affirmed that society was a contract between the living, the dead and those who are yet to be born. By this definition, Liberals including Cameroonian Tories have betrayed our past . They have betrayed our present. And they have betrayed our future. They have broken the sacred contract between the generations because they believe in nothing except the self, whilst we are faithful to that contract and believe in something greater than ourselves: our country, its people, its culture, the primacy of its traditional religion and much else besides.
The Betrayal of Our Past
In spite of the ludicrous historical perversions of left liberalism which lyingly try to force a multiracial history on Britain, until recently one of the most racially culturally and religiously homogenous nations ever (but which unwittingly confirm the importance of ancestry in national identity), this country was built by the ancestors of the native British. They built it, they struggled, they bled, not for the benefit of foreigners, but for themselves and for their progeny and their progeny - ourselves, their heirs. By destroying our traditions in favour of a continental –style manufactured arrangement in Europe and handing this country over to any Ahmed, Mohammed or Leroy, our present leadership has betrayed that trust and that legacy.
Burke said,
‘The fair mansion of civilisation which we enjoy was not built with our hands, and our hands must refrain from polluting it. Being mere life-tenants, we have no business to cut off the entail, or to commit waste on the inheritance.’ This is what Burke explains as "one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated." To deny it is to reduce men to the condition of the "flies of a summer"
The WW11 Generation would not have fought if they could have seen how their beloved Country has been polluted
One of the saddest news items of recent years was the report of the sense of betrayal of those who fought the Second World War as obtained by the research for a book. ‘This isn’t the Britain we fought for,’ say the
‘unknown warriors of WW11’, read the Daily Mail headline of 21st November 2009.
‘Sarah Robinson was just at teenager when WW11 broke out. She endured the Blitz, watching for fires during Luftwaffe air raids armed with a bucket of sand. Often she would walk ten miles home from work in the blackout with bombs falling around her. As soon as she turned 18, she joined the Royal Navy to do her bit for the war effort. Hers was small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation’s sense of service and sacrifice.
‘But was it worth it? Her answer –and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80’s and 90’s -is a resounding no.’
‘They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. ‘’It’s not our country any more,’’ they say in sorrow and in anger. Sarah harks back to the days when ‘’people kept the laws and were polite and courteous. We didn’t have much money, but we were contented and happy.‘
’People whistled and sang. There was still the United Kingdom, our country, which we fought for, our freedom , our democracy. But where is it now?’’
The Betrayal of the Present
The betrayal of the past breaks the contract with it, but the present also betrays itself. For when it could have been the heir to the great tradition, the wisdom of our ancestors, it opted instead to reject it in favour of - what? Of belief in nothingness; nothing except the self and its gratifications. When it could have had ideals of service and self –sacrifice; belief in belonging to a greater whole at it heart it now has self-fulfilment in things. The results of this materialism lie in the balkanisation of our country and smoking in towns and cities across the nation - fires that Hitler would have been proud of. This is secular nihilism and liberal individualism in action. It is a nothingness which feels it owes nothing to the past except contempt.
The Betrayal of the Future
The burning rubble, the colonised country, the tramping underfoot of our culture, our religion and traditions in favour of those of elsewhere - these are what are a now to be bequeathed to our children and their children. The ‘me’ generation which gives not a hoot for the future because it doesn’t believe in anything, even for many in having children at all, has squandered their inheritance.
Like the multicultural, multiracial slum that Britain has become, the evils of the Credit Crunch will be our children’s inheritance. They are the result of the economics of the ‘me’ generation which ran up towering debts in living for today. It is our children (if any) and their children who will pay.
The widespread riots this country has seen recently, the product of Burke’s ‘liberal descent’ and the mad, French Revolutionary emphasis on an unattainable and unjustifiable ‘Equality’ which discounts ‘Liberty’ never mind ‘Fraternity’ may prove a turning point in our history when people begin to realise that Leftist Liberalism is a disaster for civilised life and begin to move away from this brand of ideology back to Burkean empiricism and the wisdom of our traditions. Let us hope so.
