printMy Friday column for October 22 will probably be titled “Thomas Paine: 18th Century Che Guevara.” The column following it, to be published on Friday October the 29th, is “The ‘Moronizing’ Of Modern Culture.”
You’ll have to read the first to appreciate the second, as they are part of a conversation with Dennis O’Keeffe, Professor of Sociology at the University of Buckingham, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, “the UK’s original free-market think-tank, founded in 1955.”
Under discussion is the subject of Professor O’Keeffe’s latest book, “Edmund Burke.”
One of the questions I asked Dennis was “Why is it that one rarely hears Edmund Burke mentioned in American public discourse, yet my countrymen know and love Thomas Paine, who sympathized with the Jacobins and spat venom at Burke (‘the greatest Irishman who ever lived’) for his devastating critique of the blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious ‘Revolution in France’?”
Indeed, although neglected, Edmund Burke’s thinking is central to American—and any other—ordered liberty.
Be sure to read the two columns, which you can follow from Barely a Blog to WND.COM.
I am away at the 3rd annual meeting of the HL Mencken Club. Please join me if you are in the vicinity. The details are HERE.