The Politics of Edmund Burke as Related to Classical Liberalism and its Derivatives

As liberalism ideology evolved and championed by the economic leaders, it pose a threat to the existing social settings such as the presence of the nobility, and the church. The attempt to defend existing social arrangement is what brought about conservatism. Conservatives stood against the ideas of liberals in a rational for maintaining existing traditional political structures and the centralization of power. They stood against transferring political responsibility to the common people under the disguise of equality (Shively, 2014).

The further development of industrialisation led to social and economic inequality. This led to a revision of classical liberal ideas to prevent the spread of ignorance and poverty. It is suggested that modern liberals have betrayed classical liberal ideas as they embrace collectivism and diverge from classical liberalism on issues such as freedom. However, it can be argued that modern liberals have simply built on classical liberal ideas such as its commitment to the individual.

Liberalism, in general, was an ideological movement that emerged out of the ideas of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. It embraced the ideas of individualism which were established in the Renaissance and Reformation era. The Renaissance period sparked a belief in the importance of the individual in society. It helped promote the beliefs of classical liberalism which gradually formed into the liberal ideology of the 19th century. Individuals that were waiting to get their individual rights and freedoms were allowed to finally gain liberty and power through this period of time. Classical liberalism developed

Next, the new ideal of government started bringing new ideas of how the government should be established. The old theocracy view of the Puritans gave power to the ministers of the older settlements which limited all power from the people. An example of political philosophy ideas that were proposed was the introduction of empiricism by John Locke which profoundly influenced American society to the thought that government had an emphasis of a social contract which created a consistency between society and the laws of nature. This meant that power would reside with the people rather than the state. The Puritan government, before the Enlightenment, was shrouded in myth and radical religious rule where they believed that God had everything to do with how they made decisions. Enlightenment philosophers that would eventually come to be, such as Thomas Jefferson, introduced the Constitution which stated: that the government would be “for the people, by

Modern and Classical liberalism can be distinguished historically. Indeed when most people attempt to distinguish the two, placing the strands into time periods is perhaps the most obvious and easiest distinctions to make. The period in between the late 18th century and the mid 19th is that magnanimous with Classical liberalism. It was the earliest liberal tradition, and reached its high point during the early industrialization of the 19th century and is therefore sometimes referred to as ‘19th century liberalism’. Politicians and thinkers associated with it are Smith, Ricardo and Locke. Modern liberal ideas were related to the further development of industrialization and thus people associate it with the period between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century and with figures such as J. S. Mill, Green and Lloyd- George. Indeed the historical development of society led to a parallel evolution of liberalism, with the character of liberalism changing as the ‘rising middle classes’ succeeded in establishing their economic and political dominance. Liberalism was no longer radical or revolutionary, but had become increasingly conservative and concerned itself less with change and reform, but instead with the maintenance of the status quo. This lead to liberals in the late 19th century beginning to question the

Named the ‘‘Father of Classical Liberalism’’, Locke was a strong advocate of human rights, a devoted enlightenment thinker and a huge influence on modern liberalism and libertarians. On the other hand, Burke is considered

“On Political Labels” explains the evolution of the words: liberal and conservative. He goes into detail that back in the 19th century and early 20th century a liberal was one that believed in less regulation and less government in your personal

The book Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod is a quality summary of the events that occurred in a dark period of the Missouri Synod’s church history. Burkee’s book portrays the events that transpired through sources which when used, allow for a deeper understanding. Seminex is often a topic which Missouri Synod Lutherans would like to forget, in fact many do not understand the full scale of the event and the influences it has had on the church to this day. While this is not a primary part of Burkee’s thesis, it can not be ignored that Burkee shows connections between today and the seminex years.

Liberalism and conservatism have been political ideas and thoughts from the very birth of our democracy. Their views and points of the government's role in a democratic society have changed over the years, but the basic ideas and principles have remained the same. There are many different degrees of liberalism and conservatism as almost anyone can be labeled. Some individuals are radical and extreme while others stand on more of a neutral territory, but the debates between the understood ideas of each group have continued throughout the history of the United States. We will take liberalism's Gary Doore and conservatism's Irving Kristol as modern day examples and compare and contrast the

Like Rousseau, Burke too believes in freedom liberty of man in the broad sense of the word (Burke, 3). Liberty and freedom are important, but not enough to be allowed to completely upset the natural order. Burke sees man as being born constrained by the and traditions of his ancestors. These traditions include the institutions by which man is governed. Burke attributes the further development and flourishing of society to the maintenance of the natural order and the respect and upholding of these traditions. (Placeholder1)

Classical liberalism is the transition from focusing on government to focusing on the rights of individuals. This transition came about during the time of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment period was when man started to have more faith in his own reasoning. People began to look for evidence on their beliefs themselves and to find proof on these beliefs, so that they could come up with their own opinions on things. One way that they did this was by going back and rereading Roman and Greek texts and retranslating these texts. This new way of thinking also caused the Protestant Reformation to occur. Some of the most influential Enlightenment writers were John Locke, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and the people of France’s National Constituent Assembly.

Let’s start at Libertarianism, explained by Campbell as a theory which claims that humans are free agents unaffected by the chain of causality that rules the natural world.

John Stuart Mill was a classical liberal thinker and believed, through the influence of his father, that man deserved to live a life that promoted the greatest amount of happiness with limited government intervention. Mill grew up with the belief that there was no God and therefore believed that man is born inherently good; government should be limited to allow individuals to make their own decisions from their inherently good instincts; economic freedom provided individuals with the protection of rights and promoted the ideology that Mill stood for most, Utilitarianism which highly influenced classical liberalism.

With this being said it is not the midpoint between these positions; Przywara uses Lateran IV’s formula “for every similarity there is an ever greater dissimilarity.” Burkean conservatism, similarly, is almost a spanning of other political philosophies. Take two other political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, specifically regarding the nature of the state. Hobbes seems to take the univocal position; the state is the unification of the people, the body, and the king as the head, forming the Leviathan. With this being said the position flips into equivocity, because the king is seen as the “greater dissimilarity.” The problem Hobbes runs into is his absolutism; if the king becomes a tyrant, all the citizens can do is to wait for a new king. (Duncan) On the other hand Rousseau seems to take the equivocal position, believing the formal nature of the state is almost unnatural. Rousseau however falls into the same dialectical flipping, switching to a univocal position, specifically his notion of the social contract. Since all men are created equally, it becomes the duty of the citizenry to depose of tyrannical ruler. (Bertram) These two ideologies lack the “rhythm” of analogy, leading to the ideological collapse. Przywara explains this collapse as the “either-or abrupt change” cause by the dialectic (Przywara 206). Burke, however, does not seem to make the same

“Mr. Burke is so little acquainted with constituent principles of government, that he confounds democracy and representation together. Representation was a thing unknown in the