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Joel Watson's avatar

Excellent essay. A great resource on this topic is Yuval Levin's The Great Debate, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, And the Birth of Right and Left. I would submit that one shouldn't over emphasize Burke's argument that any one generation could bind those that follow but rather focus on his emphasis that no one rational man or generation could theorize their way to a better solution because it was simply beyond their capacity. Rather, as you note, Burke's main point was that knowledge was incremental, building upon previous knowledge and also deconstructing earlier knowledge when it needed to be improved. Not only does this under pin the conservative versus liberal concept of politics but also the British vs Continental approach to learning, now often seen as the difference between how historians and political economists approach a problem and how political scientists approach a problem. The former accept the messiness of humanity and the incremental wisdom, the later seek to impose a neat and rational theory on humanity. The former draw inferences from the evidence, the later seek evidence to support their reasoning.

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DENNIS B MURPHY's avatar

quote: "Paine believed that the world is created anew with each generation. The past is less likely to be a source of wisdom than of oppression. Humans today can choose the best of the past, but there is no presumption in favor of the past. Self-government meant government by people themselves, not by their ancestors"

This would seem a direct rebuttal of the so-called "originalists" or "textualist" views of the Constitution which conservative like to push- By using these faux doctrines they are indeed letting the past govern from the grave as well as "The most fatuous of these points, in Paine's opinion, was this idea that one generation could bind all posterity" This whole attitude of some on SCOTUS that we need to look at how things were done historically is bogus!

A "living Constitution" allows each generation to govern itself.

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