“Surely you’re not against liberty, equality, and fraternity?!” you ask. Well, no, not necessarily – depending on what you mean by those terms. The trouble is that though some of the ideas that commonly go under those labels are good, others are very bad.’
Hmmm…:
‘Modern egalitarianism makes essentially this mistake. In the name of equal concern for all, it resists or even rejects the idea that different members of society have different roles, aptitudes, and needs. Hence socialism’s hostility to the very existence of different classes. Hence feminism’s hostility to traditional sex roles within the family and to the idea that men and women naturally tend to differ in psychological traits no less than they do physiologically. Hence the liberal’s dogmatic insistence on seeing persistent differences in economic and other outcomes as a result of unjust discrimination and insufficiently vigorous social engineering.’
Just providing a reasoned, principled critique of such liberal political idealism may actually be beneficial to us all.
Edward Feser In The Claremont Review: ‘Looking For Meaning in All The Wrong Places’
From Edward Feser: ‘Nagel And His Critics Part IV’
Leo Strauss seems to have had Burke succumbing to historicism? A response here.
As to the American and French Revolutions:
“In both cases the political leaders whom Burke opposed insisted on certain rights: the English government on the rights of soverignty and the French revolutionists insisted on the rights of man. In both cases Burke proceeded in exactly the same manner: he questions less the rights than the wisdom of exercising the rights.”
“What ever might have to be said about the propriety of Burke’s usage, it is here sufficient to note that, in judging the political leaders whom he opposed in the two most important actions of his life, he traced their lack of prudence less to passion than to the intrusion of the spirit of theory into the field of politics.”
Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’