Edmund Burke

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Morning visionaries,

As you may have surmised, I have no problem posting things that
progressives find distressing to their tidy and very narrow worldview.
This is not hard to do when dealing with fundamentalists who have no
fundament. But I do not do it for the sake of being offensive --
the point is always to point to the permanent things. The point about
Edmund Burke may have seemed like a quibble to some, but it was a serious
one. Of course we all quote one another in debate, but quotations like
these carry an implied approbation, and I thought we should all realize
what Edmund Burke would have said about those arguments (!) which said
that making women keep their tops on was a violation of civil rights
because men didn't have to. In an earlier exchange, I was exhorted with
religious fervor to read the U.S. Constitution instead of waiting (as I
apparently had been) for the movie. A delightful thought experiment
occurs to me -- trying to explain to James Madison that mandatory tops
for women was unconstitutional. I like to imagine our former president's
eyes getting as big as saucer plates.

At the same time, I have no desire whatever to upset people over things
like subject headings and failure to put one's name at the bottom of the
post. With regard to the changes in subject headings, I like to think of
it in evolutionary terms -- letting arguments grow and evolve out of the
Cambrian strata and into other exciting and progressive
directions.

Lead us, Evolution, lead us

        

Up the
future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.

        

For
stagnation is despair;
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,

        

Lead us
nobody knows where.

        

        

        

        

C.S.
Lewis

With regard to the name at the bottom, I am now resolved to behave
myself.


Douglas Wilson