Anti-Burkeans vs. Burkeans

1. Anti-Burkeans favor government. Burkeans favor markets. Neither is entirely wrong though Burkeans are more right.

2. Anti-Burkeans look for economic evil, find it and get mad.  Then they want someone punished, someone rich.  Nevermind that punishing success has long been a hallmark of deleterious populism.  Burkeans desire economic opportunity, as unfettered as possible.  Why?  Because the profit motive is the most important invention in human history when it comes to raising living standards.  More people have been raised from poverty, been introduced to the middle class, bought a car, put a roof over their heads, hell, started suffering from Type 2 Diabetes because of the profit motive than every charity put together.  This doesn’t mean charity is bad, so decompress.  Chill.  Charity is a fundamental societal good, necessary always and especially under dCentralized Control.  But charity is funded from society’s profit.  Ipso facto, the profit motive is humanity’s most important tool for elevating living standards.

3. Anti-Burkeans see classes populated by victims or villains.  Burkeans see individuals, albeit individuals functioning inside societal structures.

4. Anti-Burkeans focus on visible government.  Burkeans prefer the invisible hand, knowing that it allows hard-working individuals to thrive while increasing prosperity for society as a whole.

5. Anti-Burkeans think we’re doomed, what with global warming, GMOs and the persistence of war.  Burkeans think this is the best time to be alive, what with America’s exceptional values having led the world on a two century journey into an increasingly liberal, globalized and prosperous economy.  Want stats?  Matt Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves has dozens of pages of them.

6. The True Left call themselves Progressives but favor centralized power, an organizing structure abhorred in virtually every progressive realm.  Centralized Internet?  Uh, no.  Centralized Computers?  Steve Jobs killed them.  Centralized nervous systems?  In the lower life forms perhaps.  Centralized health care?  Politically “Progressive”, organizationally limiting.  Burkeans favor decentralized power, resting as much of it as possible in the individual, consistent with the natural and God-given rights guaranteed Americans in our founding documents.  Oh by the way, this is the main reason America has been the world’s primary economic dynamo for well over a century now.

7. Many think we’ve peaked – or that our natural resources have peaked.  Burkeans know that bountifulness is price bound. Raise the price and ingenuity follows, after which breakthroughs make the impossible possible.  In short, bountifulness happens, per George Will.  This isn’t due to moral turpitude as the Left would have it.