Today is the birthday of one of the greatest of the conservative political thinkers in the Anglosphere, though contrary to what some ignorant people maintain,
Edmund Burke was a Whig not a Tory. His ideas on freedom, English enlightened virtues and the role of the state remain as valid and important as when they were first voiced. (Though, to be fair, one must deplore his role in the politically motivated and entirely dishonourable attempt to impeach Warren Hatings.)
Am currently reading Hume’s Essays Moral, Political, Literary and wonder if his curious blend of economic liberalism but political scepticism — as in utopian projects — echo Burke’s Whig-Tory sensibilities (as they are now known popularly)?
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