WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.080 Hello and welcome back. You are listening to 00:00:02.080 --> 00:00:05.519 The Deep Dive. I'm your host, and today we are 00:00:05.519 --> 00:00:08.580 on a mission. A big one. A big one. We're taking 00:00:08.580 --> 00:00:10.939 a stack of history books, biographies, political 00:00:10.939 --> 00:00:14.099 treatises, and honestly, this stack is heavy 00:00:14.099 --> 00:00:16.579 enough to be a safety hazard if it were to fall 00:00:16.579 --> 00:00:19.160 off the desk. I can confirm that. It is a hefty 00:00:19.160 --> 00:00:21.879 stack today. But, you know, absolutely necessary. 00:00:22.219 --> 00:00:24.760 We're going to unpack it all, sift through the 00:00:24.760 --> 00:00:28.160 noise, and find those absolute nuggets of insight 00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:30.309 that you need to know. Because the subject demands 00:00:30.309 --> 00:00:33.329 it. He really does. Today we are tackling a giant. 00:00:33.409 --> 00:00:36.469 We're talking about Edmund Burke. Now, depending 00:00:36.469 --> 00:00:39.609 on who you ask, he's either this profound genius 00:00:39.609 --> 00:00:43.490 or a complete relic. Or both. Or both. You might 00:00:43.490 --> 00:00:45.590 know him as the father of modern conservatism. 00:00:45.630 --> 00:00:47.750 You may have walked past his statue in Washington, 00:00:47.950 --> 00:00:50.570 D .C. or London and not given it a second glance. 00:00:50.890 --> 00:00:52.710 But here's the hook, and this is what really 00:00:52.710 --> 00:00:55.570 pulled me into the research this week. Burke 00:00:55.570 --> 00:00:58.289 is a walking, talking paradox. He really is. 00:00:58.350 --> 00:01:00.670 I mean, he's a figure of just massive contradictions. 00:01:01.049 --> 00:01:03.950 Exactly. On the one hand, he's the icon of the 00:01:03.950 --> 00:01:07.090 right. He's the guy who defended the monarchy, 00:01:07.109 --> 00:01:10.370 the church, the aristocracy, all the established 00:01:10.370 --> 00:01:13.250 institutions. The very image of a traditionalist. 00:01:13.590 --> 00:01:15.390 But then you actually look at his record, his 00:01:15.390 --> 00:01:17.750 speeches, his votes in parliament, and for the 00:01:17.750 --> 00:01:20.209 vast majority of his life, he was fighting for 00:01:20.209 --> 00:01:23.519 causes that look incredibly... Well, liberal. 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:26.079 Even radical for his time, you could say. Right. 00:01:26.180 --> 00:01:28.200 I mean, he championed the American colonists 00:01:28.200 --> 00:01:30.599 against the British crown. A huge deal. He fought 00:01:30.599 --> 00:01:32.780 tooth and nail for the rights of Irish Catholics 00:01:32.780 --> 00:01:36.040 against the Protestant ascendancy. A cause very 00:01:36.040 --> 00:01:37.980 close to his heart for reasons we'll get into. 00:01:38.159 --> 00:01:42.239 And he spent years, decades even, trying to impeach 00:01:42.239 --> 00:01:44.099 a corporate governor for corruption and human 00:01:44.099 --> 00:01:47.099 rights abuses in India. He hated the slave trade. 00:01:47.219 --> 00:01:49.099 If you just looked at that list, you'd think, 00:01:49.140 --> 00:01:52.040 OK, this guy is a classic bleeding heart reformer. 00:01:52.040 --> 00:01:53.959 You'd put him squarely on the progressive side 00:01:53.959 --> 00:01:56.480 of the ledger. No question. And yet when the 00:01:56.480 --> 00:01:59.920 French Revolution comes along in 1789, a revolution 00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:03.040 that was, you know, screaming liberty, equality, 00:02:03.340 --> 00:02:06.599 fraternity, a revolution that literally overthrew 00:02:06.599 --> 00:02:10.139 a King Burke. didn't just hesitate. No, he didn't 00:02:10.139 --> 00:02:12.719 just critique it. He absolutely loathed it. He 00:02:12.719 --> 00:02:15.719 recoiled in horror. He treated it like a plague, 00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:17.860 like a virus that was going to destroy civilization. 00:02:18.319 --> 00:02:21.379 And that right there is the core tension. That's 00:02:21.379 --> 00:02:23.620 the riddle we have to solve today. How can the 00:02:23.620 --> 00:02:26.159 same man be the best friend of the American Revolution 00:02:26.159 --> 00:02:27.919 and the mortal enemy of the French Revolution? 00:02:28.219 --> 00:02:31.699 Was he a hypocrite? Did he just get old and cranky? 00:02:32.120 --> 00:02:34.860 Or is there actually a coherent philosophy underneath 00:02:34.860 --> 00:02:37.349 all that noise that explains it? And I think 00:02:37.349 --> 00:02:40.110 the answer is a firm yes to that last one. There's 00:02:40.110 --> 00:02:42.330 absolutely a deeper thread. To understand Burke, 00:02:42.389 --> 00:02:44.030 you can't just look at him as a politician who 00:02:44.030 --> 00:02:46.150 flips a coin on issues. No. You have to see him 00:02:46.150 --> 00:02:48.349 as a philosopher who is wrestling with the most 00:02:48.349 --> 00:02:51.150 fundamental tension in human society, the tension 00:02:51.150 --> 00:02:53.289 between liberty and order. Liberty and order. 00:02:53.430 --> 00:02:56.090 Yeah. And I think by the end of this conversation, 00:02:56.229 --> 00:02:58.210 we're going to see that his answer to that tension 00:02:58.210 --> 00:03:01.189 is surprisingly and perhaps even uncomfortably 00:03:01.189 --> 00:03:03.349 relevant to the world we're living in right now. 00:03:03.849 --> 00:03:06.669 So our mission today is to decode Edmund Burke, 00:03:06.810 --> 00:03:10.250 to move past the bronze statue and get to the 00:03:10.250 --> 00:03:13.409 flesh and blood man. And as a little teaser for 00:03:13.409 --> 00:03:16.409 later, we are also going to debunk the most famous 00:03:16.409 --> 00:03:20.889 quote attributed to him. Ah, yes. The famous 00:03:20.889 --> 00:03:23.289 one. You know the one, the only thing necessary 00:03:23.289 --> 00:03:26.469 for the triumph of evil. Is for good men to do 00:03:26.469 --> 00:03:29.289 nothing. Spoiler alert. He never actually said 00:03:29.289 --> 00:03:31.289 it. But we will get to what he actually said, 00:03:31.330 --> 00:03:33.550 which I think is arguably more powerful. a bit 00:03:33.550 --> 00:03:35.830 later on. It's more specific and more challenging, 00:03:35.930 --> 00:03:38.250 I'd say. Agreed. So let's start at the very beginning, 00:03:38.389 --> 00:03:40.969 because, you know, when we talk about 18th century 00:03:40.969 --> 00:03:43.569 British politicians, we picture a very specific 00:03:43.569 --> 00:03:46.289 type of person. Born with a silver spoon, probably. 00:03:46.449 --> 00:03:49.110 Wealthy, aristocratic, English, probably born 00:03:49.110 --> 00:03:52.919 in a sprawling manor house. Burke. Not even close. 00:03:53.020 --> 00:03:55.379 And honestly, I don't think you can understand 00:03:55.379 --> 00:03:58.780 a single thing Edmund Burke did or wrote later 00:03:58.780 --> 00:04:01.120 in life if you don't understand where he started. 00:04:01.240 --> 00:04:06.610 He was from day one in London. An outsider. Let's 00:04:06.610 --> 00:04:08.889 unpack that. He was born in Dublin, Ireland in 00:04:08.889 --> 00:04:12.710 1729. Correct. And just being Irish in London 00:04:12.710 --> 00:04:16.089 in the 1700s was already, you know, a bit of 00:04:16.089 --> 00:04:17.750 a mark against you. There was a lot of prejudice. 00:04:17.990 --> 00:04:21.110 Sure. But the real complexity, the real engine 00:04:21.110 --> 00:04:23.269 of his thought comes from his family dynamic. 00:04:23.310 --> 00:04:26.149 It sounds like the setup for a tense family drama. 00:04:26.389 --> 00:04:29.050 How so? Well, his father, Richard Burke, was 00:04:29.050 --> 00:04:32.350 a successful solicitor and, crucially, a member 00:04:32.350 --> 00:04:34.660 of the established Church of Ireland. A Protestant. 00:04:34.980 --> 00:04:37.040 Okay. Part of the establishment. Very much so. 00:04:37.160 --> 00:04:39.980 But his mother, Mary Nagel, came from a respectable 00:04:39.980 --> 00:04:42.899 but declining family of Catholic gentry, and 00:04:42.899 --> 00:04:45.500 she was a devout Roman Catholic. A mixed marriage. 00:04:45.560 --> 00:04:47.600 In today's world, that's barely a footnote. Right. 00:04:47.699 --> 00:04:50.540 But in 18th century Ireland, that was everything, 00:04:50.839 --> 00:04:52.439 wasn't it? It was absolutely massive. You have 00:04:52.439 --> 00:04:55.000 to remember the context of the penal laws. These 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:57.899 were a brutal set of laws designed specifically 00:04:57.899 --> 00:05:00.620 to suppress and disempower the Catholic majority 00:05:00.620 --> 00:05:03.240 in Ireland. If you were a Catholic, you were 00:05:03.240 --> 00:05:05.579 essentially a second class citizen. It was systemic. 00:05:06.079 --> 00:05:08.600 Completely. Yeah. You couldn't vote. You couldn't 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:10.879 sit in parliament. You couldn't hold any public 00:05:10.879 --> 00:05:13.459 office. You couldn't be a lawyer or a judge. 00:05:13.620 --> 00:05:15.279 You couldn't even own a weapon for self -defense. 00:05:15.819 --> 00:05:18.620 I read about one particular law that just, it 00:05:18.620 --> 00:05:22.000 really stuck with me. The horse rule. Ah, yes, 00:05:22.139 --> 00:05:24.540 the five -pound horse. If a Catholic owned a 00:05:24.540 --> 00:05:27.920 horse, any horse, a Protestant could walk up 00:05:27.920 --> 00:05:30.259 and offer him five pounds for it, and the Catholic 00:05:30.259 --> 00:05:32.139 had to sell it. It didn't matter if it was a 00:05:32.139 --> 00:05:34.660 prized stallion worth 100 pounds. Exactly. It 00:05:34.660 --> 00:05:36.800 wasn't just about economics. It was a system 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:39.779 designed to humiliate, to constantly remind you 00:05:39.779 --> 00:05:42.279 of your inferior status. It was designed to keep 00:05:42.279 --> 00:05:44.800 the Catholic population impoverished and powerless. 00:05:45.259 --> 00:05:48.339 So Burke grows up in this house where his father 00:05:48.339 --> 00:05:51.000 represents the system, the Anglican legal official 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:53.649 world. And his mother represents the oppressed 00:05:53.649 --> 00:05:55.949 majority. He's living that contradiction every 00:05:55.949 --> 00:05:58.209 single day. He was raised Anglican. He had to 00:05:58.209 --> 00:06:00.569 be. For his career prospects. For any kind of 00:06:00.569 --> 00:06:03.589 career at all. His father was pragmatic, but 00:06:03.589 --> 00:06:06.250 his sister, Giuliano, was raised in her mother's 00:06:06.250 --> 00:06:09.430 faith as a Catholic. And he spent his childhood 00:06:09.430 --> 00:06:11.870 summers with his mother's family in County Cork, 00:06:12.009 --> 00:06:15.069 the Nagels, who were Catholic gentry living under 00:06:15.069 --> 00:06:17.509 these suffocating restrictions. So he wasn't 00:06:17.509 --> 00:06:19.670 just reading about oppression in a book. Not 00:06:19.670 --> 00:06:21.829 at all. He was seeing it happen to his uncles, 00:06:21.949 --> 00:06:24.670 his cousins. He was feeling the injustice in 00:06:24.670 --> 00:06:27.930 his own family. It gave him this lifelong sympathy 00:06:27.930 --> 00:06:31.089 for the underdog, for the outsider, that most 00:06:31.089 --> 00:06:33.009 of his English colleagues in Parliament just 00:06:33.009 --> 00:06:35.490 couldn't comprehend it was in his bones. But 00:06:35.490 --> 00:06:37.910 that same background also put a target on his 00:06:37.910 --> 00:06:40.459 back for his entire career, didn't it? A huge 00:06:40.459 --> 00:06:43.360 target. His enemies used it against him relentlessly. 00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:45.420 The rumors. I saw some of the political cartoons 00:06:45.420 --> 00:06:47.220 from the time. They're vicious. They drew him 00:06:47.220 --> 00:06:49.279 in Jesuit robes. They called him Edmund the Jesuit, 00:06:49.319 --> 00:06:52.959 the Irish papist. It was the standard ugly smear 00:06:52.959 --> 00:06:55.500 of the day. The accusation was that he was a 00:06:55.500 --> 00:06:58.180 secret Catholic, a sleeper agent for the Pope, 00:06:58.319 --> 00:07:01.100 sent to destroy the Protestant constitution of 00:07:01.100 --> 00:07:04.600 England from the inside. And they threw around 00:07:04.600 --> 00:07:07.360 this claim that he was educated at St. Omer. 00:07:07.800 --> 00:07:10.100 What was that? Saint -Omer was a famous Jesuit 00:07:10.100 --> 00:07:13.139 seminary in France. It was a shorthand way of 00:07:13.139 --> 00:07:15.399 saying he was a foreign -trained subversive. 00:07:15.519 --> 00:07:17.439 Was there any truth to it at all? Absolutely 00:07:17.439 --> 00:07:20.360 none. He went to Trinity College, Dublin, which 00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:22.910 was a bastion of Protestant learning. But the 00:07:22.910 --> 00:07:26.110 mud stuck because he did sympathize with Catholics. 00:07:26.310 --> 00:07:29.389 He did fight to repeal the penal laws. And his 00:07:29.389 --> 00:07:31.670 enemies couldn't imagine any reason for that 00:07:31.670 --> 00:07:33.990 other than secret allegiance. They couldn't grasp 00:07:33.990 --> 00:07:36.149 that he was acting on principle. Exactly. They 00:07:36.149 --> 00:07:38.970 couldn't grasp that he had seen firsthand that 00:07:38.970 --> 00:07:41.250 sometimes the law and justice are two very different 00:07:41.250 --> 00:07:44.370 things. The penal laws were legal, but they weren't 00:07:44.370 --> 00:07:47.110 just. And that distinction would shape his entire 00:07:47.110 --> 00:07:50.290 worldview. That distinction, legal versus just. 00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:52.699 That seems to be a theme we're going to see over 00:07:52.699 --> 00:07:54.379 and over again. It's central to understanding 00:07:54.379 --> 00:07:57.259 him. So he finishes university. And like every 00:07:57.259 --> 00:07:59.620 ambitious young man with a demanding father, 00:07:59.779 --> 00:08:01.899 he goes to London to study law at the Middle 00:08:01.899 --> 00:08:05.279 Temple. His dad must have been thrilled. My son, 00:08:05.519 --> 00:08:08.379 the barrister. Oh, absolutely. This was the plan. 00:08:08.600 --> 00:08:11.199 But then, like so many ambitious young men with 00:08:11.199 --> 00:08:14.579 demanding fathers. He promptly disappointed him. 00:08:14.660 --> 00:08:17.319 He hated the law. He found it dry, technical, 00:08:17.459 --> 00:08:20.079 what he called the narrow and contracted practice 00:08:20.079 --> 00:08:23.040 of the law. He wanted to deal with big ideas, 00:08:23.100 --> 00:08:25.379 with literature, with philosophy, with the great 00:08:25.379 --> 00:08:28.879 questions of human nature. So he just dropped 00:08:28.879 --> 00:08:31.100 out. He started traveling and writing. And his 00:08:31.100 --> 00:08:33.929 dad's reaction. He cut him off, cut off his allowance 00:08:33.929 --> 00:08:35.850 completely. It caused a rift between them that 00:08:35.850 --> 00:08:38.570 lasted for years. But this period of, you know, 00:08:38.570 --> 00:08:40.789 being a struggling writer in London is absolutely 00:08:40.789 --> 00:08:42.649 crucial because this is where we meet Burke. 00:08:43.039 --> 00:08:45.440 The philosopher. Long before he ever gave a speech 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:47.179 in Parliament, he wrote a book on aesthetics. 00:08:47.519 --> 00:08:49.759 Right. A philosophical inquiry into the origin 00:08:49.759 --> 00:08:52.639 of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. Published 00:08:52.639 --> 00:08:54.840 in 1757. Now, I have to be honest, when I hear 00:08:54.840 --> 00:08:57.419 aesthetics, my mind goes to, you know, interior 00:08:57.419 --> 00:09:00.279 design or art critics. Why does a book about 00:09:00.279 --> 00:09:02.340 art theory matter for a political deep dive? 00:09:02.559 --> 00:09:05.480 It matters immensely because it's a window into 00:09:05.480 --> 00:09:08.379 his soul. It explains how he viewed the world 00:09:08.379 --> 00:09:10.220 and, more importantly, how he viewed the state. 00:09:10.539 --> 00:09:13.539 He divides our powerful emotional experiences 00:09:13.539 --> 00:09:17.259 into two big categories, the beautiful and the 00:09:17.259 --> 00:09:19.720 sublime. Okay, let's define them. What is the 00:09:19.720 --> 00:09:21.720 beautiful, according to Burke? The beautiful 00:09:21.720 --> 00:09:25.700 is all about things that are small, smooth, polished. 00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:29.320 Pleasant. Think of a perfectly formed flower, 00:09:29.639 --> 00:09:32.399 a delicate piece of music, a well -manicured 00:09:32.399 --> 00:09:35.820 garden. So things that are pleasing and safe. 00:09:36.080 --> 00:09:38.220 Yes. Safe is a good word. They evoke feelings 00:09:38.220 --> 00:09:40.759 of love and affection. They make you feel relaxed. 00:09:41.139 --> 00:09:43.559 And the sublime. The sublime is the polar opposite. 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:47.139 It is vast. It's rugged. It's dark. It's powerful. 00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:50.470 It's obscure. So what's an example of that? Think 00:09:50.470 --> 00:09:52.870 of a violent storm at sea with massive waves 00:09:52.870 --> 00:09:55.169 crashing over your ship. Think of standing at 00:09:55.169 --> 00:09:56.889 the edge of the Grand Canyon and feeling that 00:09:56.889 --> 00:10:00.129 dizzying sense of scale. Think of a dark forest 00:10:00.129 --> 00:10:02.809 at night or a towering cathedral. So it's not 00:10:02.809 --> 00:10:04.830 scary like a horror movie, but it's overwhelming. 00:10:05.070 --> 00:10:08.450 It makes you feel small. It produces awe. And 00:10:08.450 --> 00:10:11.929 a key part of awe for Burke is a sort of delightful 00:10:11.929 --> 00:10:15.129 terror. It commands your respect because it is 00:10:15.129 --> 00:10:17.610 so much bigger and more powerful than you are. 00:10:17.710 --> 00:10:19.750 OK, I think I get the distinction. But what's 00:10:19.750 --> 00:10:22.549 the political connection? Here it is. Burke believed 00:10:22.549 --> 00:10:25.500 that the state, the government. society itself 00:10:25.500 --> 00:10:28.860 should be sublime wait the government should 00:10:28.860 --> 00:10:31.500 be a storm at sea that sounds terrible not literally 00:10:31.500 --> 00:10:34.080 but in the sense that it should be ancient mysterious 00:10:34.080 --> 00:10:36.519 and powerful it should command our reverence 00:10:36.519 --> 00:10:39.179 our awe he believed that if you look at the state 00:10:39.179 --> 00:10:42.259 as just a simple machine like a toaster that 00:10:42.259 --> 00:10:43.960 you can take apart and put back together whenever 00:10:43.960 --> 00:10:46.320 you want you lose that reverend we'll lose the 00:10:46.320 --> 00:10:48.159 authority you lose the very thing that holds 00:10:48.159 --> 00:10:50.860 society together for burke society needs its 00:10:50.860 --> 00:10:53.940 mysteries its traditions its grandeur we need 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:55.899 to look at our institutions with a sense of awe, 00:10:56.120 --> 00:10:58.840 not just as a matter of cold calculation. That 00:10:58.840 --> 00:11:01.580 is fascinating. So he's basically an anti -technocrat 00:11:01.580 --> 00:11:03.659 before technocrats even existed. He doesn't want 00:11:03.659 --> 00:11:05.779 people just poking the state with a stick to 00:11:05.779 --> 00:11:07.779 see how it works because that demystifies it. 00:11:08.299 --> 00:11:10.919 Precisely. He thinks if you strip away the mystery 00:11:10.919 --> 00:11:13.679 and the tradition, what he later calls the drapery 00:11:13.679 --> 00:11:17.159 of life, you strip away the stability. And he 00:11:17.159 --> 00:11:20.100 doubled down on this exact fear with a satire 00:11:20.100 --> 00:11:22.480 he wrote around the same time called A Vindication 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:25.019 of Natural Society. This story is hilarious. 00:11:25.120 --> 00:11:27.799 He wrote it to mock a specific person, right? 00:11:27.940 --> 00:11:31.509 A Lord Bolingbroke. Yes. Bolingbroke was a famous 00:11:31.509 --> 00:11:34.669 deist and rationalist. He had written these essays 00:11:34.669 --> 00:11:37.370 arguing for a natural religion. He basically 00:11:37.370 --> 00:11:40.470 said, hey, let's use our pure reason to strip 00:11:40.470 --> 00:11:42.610 away all the superstition and revealed truth 00:11:42.610 --> 00:11:45.090 and all the historical baggage of organized religion 00:11:45.090 --> 00:11:47.629 and just keep the parts that make logical sense. 00:11:47.870 --> 00:11:50.090 But kind of religious minimalism. Exactly. And 00:11:50.090 --> 00:11:52.210 Burke thought this was a profoundly dangerous 00:11:52.210 --> 00:11:54.990 and arrogant idea. So he wrote this pamphlet 00:11:54.990 --> 00:11:57.470 pretending to be Bolingbroke or a disciple of 00:11:57.470 --> 00:11:59.029 Bolingbroke. And what was his argument in the 00:11:59.029 --> 00:12:01.600 pamphlet? He took Bolingbroke's logic and applied 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:05.120 it to society. He argued, OK, if we're going 00:12:05.120 --> 00:12:08.019 to use pure reason to destroy the artificial 00:12:08.019 --> 00:12:11.080 construct of the church, why not use it to destroy 00:12:11.080 --> 00:12:13.279 the artificial construct of the state, too? Let's 00:12:13.279 --> 00:12:15.759 get rid of government laws, marriage, property, 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:18.879 social classes, because if you look at them with 00:12:18.879 --> 00:12:21.840 cold, abstract logic, they are all unnatural 00:12:21.840 --> 00:12:25.379 and oppressive. He was trying to show that this 00:12:25.379 --> 00:12:27.480 line of thinking, if you take it to its logical 00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:31.649 conclusion, leads to. total anarchy. It's a classic 00:12:31.649 --> 00:12:34.570 reductio ad absurdum. He was trying to demonstrate 00:12:34.570 --> 00:12:37.610 that society is not a simple logic puzzle, but 00:12:37.610 --> 00:12:40.250 he did such a brilliant job mimicking Bolingbroke's 00:12:40.250 --> 00:12:42.909 grand rationalist style that people missed the 00:12:42.909 --> 00:12:45.129 joke. Laughs. So people thought it was serious. 00:12:45.269 --> 00:12:47.789 Completely. Radical thinkers and early anarchists 00:12:47.789 --> 00:12:50.309 started reading it and saying, yes, this Bolingbroke 00:12:50.309 --> 00:12:52.490 fellow gets it down with the government. That 00:12:52.490 --> 00:12:55.029 is the ultimate danger of good satire. It is. 00:12:55.129 --> 00:12:58.149 Burke actually had to write a new preface for 00:12:58.149 --> 00:12:59.950 the second edition saying, everybody, please 00:12:59.950 --> 00:13:03.210 calm down. I'm joking. This is irony. But it 00:13:03.210 --> 00:13:06.389 shows us that even in his 20s, Burke was deeply, 00:13:06.710 --> 00:13:08.909 deeply afraid of what happens when you apply 00:13:08.909 --> 00:13:12.710 abstract, disembodied reason to complex living 00:13:12.710 --> 00:13:16.029 human things like a church or a state. So we 00:13:16.029 --> 00:13:18.070 have the philosopher, the satirist, the Irishman. 00:13:18.169 --> 00:13:20.370 But eventually the man needs a paycheck. He has 00:13:20.370 --> 00:13:22.509 to enter the political arena for real. He does. 00:13:22.629 --> 00:13:25.110 And he gets his big break when he lands a job 00:13:25.110 --> 00:13:27.429 as the private secretary to the Marcos of Rockingham. 00:13:27.490 --> 00:13:29.409 And Rockingham was a big deal. A very big deal. 00:13:29.470 --> 00:13:31.750 He was a major Whig grandee. And for a time, 00:13:31.750 --> 00:13:34.350 the... prime minister. This was Burke's ticket 00:13:34.350 --> 00:13:38.029 into the inner circle. And in 1765, through Rockingham's 00:13:38.029 --> 00:13:40.570 patronage, he enters the House of Commons representing 00:13:40.570 --> 00:13:43.669 a place called Wendover. Now, Wendover was what 00:13:43.669 --> 00:13:45.950 they called a pocket borough. For those of us 00:13:45.950 --> 00:13:47.929 who aren't experts in 18th century electoral 00:13:47.929 --> 00:13:50.570 peculiarities, what does that mean? It means 00:13:50.570 --> 00:13:53.049 the election was basically a sham. Wendover was 00:13:53.049 --> 00:13:55.490 a tiny depopulated district that was essentially 00:13:55.490 --> 00:13:58.909 in the pocket of a wealthy patron, in this case, 00:13:58.909 --> 00:14:01.309 a Lord Verney. So Verney owned the land. And 00:14:01.309 --> 00:14:03.570 there's where he controlled the handful of voters. 00:14:03.690 --> 00:14:05.730 He literally just pointed at Burke and said, 00:14:05.809 --> 00:14:09.320 he is your MP, and that was that. No campaigning, 00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:12.340 no debates, no real voting. It's just incredibly 00:14:12.340 --> 00:14:14.620 ironic, isn't it, that one of the greatest thinkers 00:14:14.620 --> 00:14:17.720 on the nature of representation entered Parliament 00:14:17.720 --> 00:14:20.919 through a completely undemocratic loophole. It 00:14:20.919 --> 00:14:23.320 is. But Burke would have defended it. He would 00:14:23.320 --> 00:14:26.360 have argued that the system of rotten boroughs, 00:14:26.440 --> 00:14:29.379 as they were called, had a hidden benefit. It 00:14:29.379 --> 00:14:31.840 allowed men of immense talent, but no personal 00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:34.559 wealth like him, to get into Parliament based 00:14:34.559 --> 00:14:38.279 on the judgment of an experienced patron. That's 00:14:38.279 --> 00:14:40.320 an interesting counter argument. He's saying 00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:42.740 if every seat was a modern, expensive popularity 00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:45.580 contest, only the independently wealthy could 00:14:45.580 --> 00:14:47.600 afford to run. That's his point. It allowed for 00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:49.980 merit to find a way in. And once he was in, he 00:14:49.980 --> 00:14:52.659 made a splash almost immediately. A huge splash 00:14:52.659 --> 00:14:54.860 from what I've read. William Pitt the Elder, 00:14:55.019 --> 00:14:56.960 who was like the Zeus of British politics at 00:14:56.960 --> 00:14:59.980 the time. A towering figure. Pitt said, Burke's 00:14:59.980 --> 00:15:02.779 maiden speech stopped the mouths of all Europe. 00:15:03.389 --> 00:15:06.169 He was an orator of the highest order. He had 00:15:06.169 --> 00:15:08.769 this incredible command of language and history 00:15:08.769 --> 00:15:11.250 and philosophy. And he brings a new and at the 00:15:11.250 --> 00:15:14.950 time controversial idea to the table, the legitimacy 00:15:14.950 --> 00:15:18.029 of the political party. Right. Which is strange 00:15:18.029 --> 00:15:20.350 to think about because today we tend to hate 00:15:20.350 --> 00:15:23.509 parties. We see them as divisive, toxic, tribal. 00:15:24.269 --> 00:15:27.230 But Burke argued they were absolutely essential 00:15:27.230 --> 00:15:30.330 for a free government. Why? You have to look 00:15:30.330 --> 00:15:33.080 at what he was up against. King George III was 00:15:33.080 --> 00:15:35.740 actively trying to reclaim power that the monarchy 00:15:35.740 --> 00:15:38.740 had lost over the previous century. He did this 00:15:38.740 --> 00:15:41.299 by creating an informal group in parliament called 00:15:41.299 --> 00:15:44.240 the King's Friends. A kind of shadow government. 00:15:44.320 --> 00:15:46.259 Exactly. They weren't the official ministers 00:15:46.259 --> 00:15:48.539 of the government, but they operated behind the 00:15:48.539 --> 00:15:50.779 scenes. They had the king's ear, they controlled 00:15:50.779 --> 00:15:53.000 royal patronage, and they pulled the strings 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:55.740 to undermine the official government if it displeased 00:15:55.740 --> 00:15:59.059 the king. Burke called it a double cabinet. So 00:15:59.059 --> 00:16:00.879 the official government was just a front and 00:16:00.879 --> 00:16:02.720 the king was really running things from the shadows. 00:16:02.919 --> 00:16:06.279 That was Burke's great fear. He saw it as a slide 00:16:06.279 --> 00:16:09.279 back toward absolute monarchy. He argued that 00:16:09.279 --> 00:16:13.240 a single independent MP acting alone was powerless 00:16:13.240 --> 00:16:15.879 against this kind of coordinated secret influence. 00:16:16.419 --> 00:16:19.360 The king could just buy him off or intimidate 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:22.220 him or crush him. So what was his solution? Association. 00:16:22.960 --> 00:16:25.539 Organization he wrote a famous pamphlet on this 00:16:25.539 --> 00:16:27.919 thoughts on the cause of the present discontents 00:16:27.919 --> 00:16:31.539 and in it He says when bad men combine the good 00:16:31.539 --> 00:16:34.190 must associate That's the origin of the good 00:16:34.190 --> 00:16:36.549 men idea, even if it's not the famous misquote. 00:16:36.690 --> 00:16:39.190 This is the real quote. He defined a political 00:16:39.190 --> 00:16:41.649 party not as a cynical group of people just trying 00:16:41.649 --> 00:16:44.389 to get power, but as a body of men united for 00:16:44.389 --> 00:16:46.769 promoting by their joint endeavors the national 00:16:46.769 --> 00:16:49.289 interest upon some particular principle in which 00:16:49.289 --> 00:16:51.370 they are all agreed. So principled opposition. 00:16:51.929 --> 00:16:54.309 Principled organized opposition was the only 00:16:54.309 --> 00:16:56.509 way to keep a government honest and to check 00:16:56.509 --> 00:16:59.500 the power of the crown. For him, party divisions, 00:16:59.779 --> 00:17:02.179 as he said, are inseparable from free government. 00:17:02.460 --> 00:17:05.240 They are the immune system of democracy. That's 00:17:05.240 --> 00:17:08.920 a powerful idea. And it brings us to 1774. Burke 00:17:08.920 --> 00:17:11.119 levels up. He gets elected to represent Bristol. 00:17:11.299 --> 00:17:14.599 And this is the big leagues. Bristol wasn't a 00:17:14.599 --> 00:17:17.039 pocket borough. It was the second city of England 00:17:17.039 --> 00:17:20.569 at the time. A massive, bustling... trading port 00:17:20.569 --> 00:17:24.250 with a huge, engaged, and very opinionated electorate. 00:17:24.309 --> 00:17:27.329 This was a real election. And this leads to one 00:17:27.329 --> 00:17:29.509 of the most famous, I think most controversial 00:17:29.509 --> 00:17:33.390 moments of his entire career, the speech to the 00:17:33.390 --> 00:17:35.730 electors of Bristol. Yes. This is where he lays 00:17:35.730 --> 00:17:37.950 out his theory of representation, what we now 00:17:37.950 --> 00:17:40.630 call the trustee model. I want to push back on 00:17:40.630 --> 00:17:42.309 this because when I first read it, it sounded 00:17:42.309 --> 00:17:45.029 incredibly arrogant. It usually does to modern 00:17:45.029 --> 00:17:47.150 ears. There's no getting around that. So set 00:17:47.150 --> 00:17:50.240 the scene. He gets elected. His colleague, the 00:17:50.240 --> 00:17:53.339 other newly elected MP for Bristol, stands up 00:17:53.339 --> 00:17:55.920 and gives a speech. And he basically promises, 00:17:56.059 --> 00:17:59.559 I will do whatever you, the voters, tell me to 00:17:59.559 --> 00:18:02.140 do. I will be your voice. I will follow your 00:18:02.140 --> 00:18:04.440 instructions. He takes the delegate approach. 00:18:04.660 --> 00:18:06.279 The common sense approach, most people would 00:18:06.279 --> 00:18:08.940 say. Right. And then Burke stands up and he says, 00:18:09.019 --> 00:18:11.480 essentially, no. I'm not going to do that. He 00:18:11.480 --> 00:18:12.980 tells them flat out, I am not your messenger. 00:18:13.180 --> 00:18:16.099 I am not a weathercock on a steeple to show you 00:18:16.099 --> 00:18:18.099 which way the wind blows. But isn't that the 00:18:18.099 --> 00:18:21.000 whole point of democracy? If I vote for you, 00:18:21.059 --> 00:18:24.259 I expect you to represent my interests, my voice. 00:18:24.900 --> 00:18:27.779 If my community wants lower taxes and you go 00:18:27.779 --> 00:18:29.579 to London and vote to raise them because you 00:18:29.579 --> 00:18:32.059 think you know better, haven't you betrayed me? 00:18:32.339 --> 00:18:35.039 Burke would say no. He would say he betrayed 00:18:35.039 --> 00:18:37.500 you if he didn't use his own judgment. Here's 00:18:37.500 --> 00:18:40.799 the key quote, and it's a stunner. Your representative 00:18:40.799 --> 00:18:43.940 owes you not his industry only, but his judgment. 00:18:44.400 --> 00:18:48.299 And he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices 00:18:48.299 --> 00:18:51.819 it to your opinion. He betrays you. That is incredibly 00:18:51.819 --> 00:18:54.660 strong language. Think of it this way. If you 00:18:54.660 --> 00:18:56.880 have a serious heart condition and you hire the 00:18:56.880 --> 00:18:59.200 best surgeon in the country, you don't stand 00:18:59.200 --> 00:19:01.000 over his shoulder in their operating room and 00:19:01.000 --> 00:19:03.059 vote on where he should make the cut. Of course 00:19:03.059 --> 00:19:04.970 not. You don't want him to ask the audience, 00:19:05.049 --> 00:19:07.650 should I cut the artery or the vein? You hired 00:19:07.650 --> 00:19:09.890 him precisely because he has spent his life studying 00:19:09.890 --> 00:19:11.750 anatomy and you haven't. You're trusting his 00:19:11.750 --> 00:19:14.569 judgment. OK, so the MP is the expert surgeon 00:19:14.569 --> 00:19:17.450 of the state. That's Burke's view. He's in London. 00:19:17.529 --> 00:19:19.450 He's reading the secret intelligence reports 00:19:19.450 --> 00:19:21.430 from the colonies. He's debating the nuances 00:19:21.430 --> 00:19:24.049 of international trade with Ireland. He's seeing 00:19:24.049 --> 00:19:27.650 the big national picture. The merchant in Bristol, 00:19:27.930 --> 00:19:30.769 as important as he is, is primarily worried about 00:19:30.769 --> 00:19:34.670 his own ledger book. Burke. argued that parliament 00:19:34.670 --> 00:19:37.869 is not a congress of ambassadors from different 00:19:37.869 --> 00:19:40.970 and hostile interests it's a deliberative assembly 00:19:40.970 --> 00:19:44.529 of one nation with one interest that of the whole 00:19:44.529 --> 00:19:48.049 and if an mp just follows the local polls he 00:19:48.049 --> 00:19:50.390 isn't governing he's just pandering logically 00:19:50.390 --> 00:19:53.849 i can see the argument but politically that sounds 00:19:53.849 --> 00:19:56.009 like absolute suicide do the people of bristol 00:19:56.009 --> 00:19:58.359 buy it Absolutely not. They hated it. Of course 00:19:58.359 --> 00:20:00.619 they did. Especially because Burke immediately 00:20:00.619 --> 00:20:03.359 proceeded to use his judgment to do things they 00:20:03.359 --> 00:20:06.119 despised. He voted to relax trade restrictions 00:20:06.119 --> 00:20:08.180 with Ireland, which the Bristol merchants saw 00:20:08.180 --> 00:20:10.319 as a direct threat to their monopoly and their 00:20:10.319 --> 00:20:12.599 profits. So he voted against the direct financial 00:20:12.599 --> 00:20:15.400 interests of his constituents. He did. He also 00:20:15.400 --> 00:20:17.319 supported a measure of relief for Catholics. 00:20:17.700 --> 00:20:21.380 And Bristol was a hotbed of anti -Catholic sentiment. 00:20:21.480 --> 00:20:23.759 He was completely out of step with public opinion 00:20:23.759 --> 00:20:26.450 back home. So he actually walked the walk. He 00:20:26.450 --> 00:20:28.369 wasn't just theorizing. He voted his conscience 00:20:28.369 --> 00:20:31.809 against his own voters' wishes because he thought 00:20:31.809 --> 00:20:33.690 it was right for the empire as a whole. He absolutely 00:20:33.690 --> 00:20:36.990 did. And in 1780, he paid the price. He lost 00:20:36.990 --> 00:20:39.630 his seat. He actually withdrew from the race 00:20:39.630 --> 00:20:42.009 before the final vote because he knew he was 00:20:42.009 --> 00:20:44.089 going to get crushed. He sacrificed his career 00:20:44.089 --> 00:20:46.430 for his principles. And that integrity brings 00:20:46.430 --> 00:20:49.789 us to the first major. liberal chapter of his 00:20:49.789 --> 00:20:53.269 legacy, the American crisis. Burke is often cited 00:20:53.269 --> 00:20:56.529 as a hero by Americans for his stance, but he 00:20:56.529 --> 00:20:58.410 wasn't calling for independence, was he? No, 00:20:58.549 --> 00:21:00.490 and that's a common misconception we need to 00:21:00.490 --> 00:21:02.369 clear up. Burke was an imperialist through and 00:21:02.369 --> 00:21:04.250 through. He believed in the British Empire. He 00:21:04.250 --> 00:21:06.329 wanted to keep it together. But he looked at 00:21:06.329 --> 00:21:08.690 how the British government under Lord North was 00:21:08.690 --> 00:21:10.650 treating the American colonies, and he thought 00:21:10.650 --> 00:21:13.420 it was sheer self -destructive madness. What 00:21:13.420 --> 00:21:15.519 was the core of his disagreement? The British 00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:18.140 government was obsessed with the principle of 00:21:18.140 --> 00:21:21.119 the thing, the right to tax. Yes. They were stuck 00:21:21.119 --> 00:21:24.160 on this abstract legalistic point. We are the 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:26.539 sovereign power. Parliament has the right to 00:21:26.539 --> 00:21:29.579 tax anyone, anywhere in the empire. And Burke's 00:21:29.579 --> 00:21:31.839 response to that was? He basically screams, I 00:21:31.839 --> 00:21:34.740 don't care about your abstract right. In his 00:21:34.740 --> 00:21:37.619 great speech on American taxation in 1774, he 00:21:37.619 --> 00:21:41.039 says, I hate the very sound of metaphysical distinctions. 00:21:41.599 --> 00:21:43.619 He says the question is not whether you have 00:21:43.619 --> 00:21:46.000 a right to make your people miserable, but whether 00:21:46.000 --> 00:21:48.200 it is not your interest to make them happy. So 00:21:48.200 --> 00:21:50.799 he's a pragmatist. A profound pragmatist, he's 00:21:50.799 --> 00:21:53.420 saying. Stop arguing about what is true in theory 00:21:53.420 --> 00:21:55.299 and look at what is happening in reality. He 00:21:55.299 --> 00:21:57.940 says, sure, maybe you have the technical legal 00:21:57.940 --> 00:22:01.220 right to tax them, but is it wise? Is it prudent? 00:22:01.519 --> 00:22:04.240 Is it worth blowing up the entire empire over 00:22:04.240 --> 00:22:06.859 a few pence of tax on tea? He wanted to turn 00:22:06.859 --> 00:22:09.779 back the clock, essentially. Yes. To a time when 00:22:09.779 --> 00:22:11.859 things worked. He wasn't proposing some radical 00:22:11.859 --> 00:22:14.500 new system. He was looking to the past for a 00:22:14.500 --> 00:22:16.980 solution. His answer was to return to the policy 00:22:16.980 --> 00:22:20.240 of salutary neglect. Basically, leave the Americans 00:22:20.240 --> 00:22:22.500 alone to tax themselves through their own assemblies, 00:22:22.579 --> 00:22:25.079 let them prosper, and Britain would prosper from 00:22:25.079 --> 00:22:27.720 the trade. His plea was leave the Americans as 00:22:27.720 --> 00:22:31.630 they anciently stood. Then in 1775, it's the 00:22:31.630 --> 00:22:34.150 11th hour. It's just weeks before the first shots 00:22:34.150 --> 00:22:36.609 are fired at Lexington and Concord. And he makes 00:22:36.609 --> 00:22:40.890 this one last massive, desperate effort for peace. 00:22:41.349 --> 00:22:44.369 The speech is called Conciliation with America. 00:22:44.569 --> 00:22:46.670 And it is one of the greatest speeches ever delivered 00:22:46.670 --> 00:22:48.630 in the English language. The imagery he uses 00:22:48.630 --> 00:22:51.009 here is just, it's breathtaking. This is the 00:22:51.009 --> 00:22:53.490 ties argument, right? It is. He stands up in 00:22:53.490 --> 00:22:55.210 Parliament and tries to convince them that you 00:22:55.210 --> 00:22:57.369 cannot hold an empire together by force alone. 00:22:57.769 --> 00:22:59.829 You can't just send armies and tax collectors. 00:23:00.049 --> 00:23:02.869 He says, my hold of the colonies is in the close 00:23:02.869 --> 00:23:05.069 affection which grows from common names, from 00:23:05.069 --> 00:23:07.410 kindred blood, from similar privileges and equal 00:23:07.410 --> 00:23:10.309 protection. These are ties which, though light 00:23:10.309 --> 00:23:13.049 as air, are as strong as links of iron. Light 00:23:13.049 --> 00:23:16.730 as air are as strong as links of iron. That is 00:23:16.730 --> 00:23:20.049 just pure poetry. It's profound political psychology. 00:23:20.710 --> 00:23:23.809 He's saying that a shared culture, a shared language, 00:23:23.950 --> 00:23:27.049 a shared history of liberty, these are stronger 00:23:27.049 --> 00:23:29.650 bonds than any army you can send across the Atlantic. 00:23:29.990 --> 00:23:33.250 And then he makes a prophecy, a chillingly accurate 00:23:33.250 --> 00:23:36.019 one. What does he predict? He warns them. He 00:23:36.019 --> 00:23:38.779 says, remember who these people are. The Americans 00:23:38.779 --> 00:23:41.200 are descendants of Englishmen. They inherited 00:23:41.200 --> 00:23:44.559 that fierce Protestant English spirit of liberty. 00:23:45.039 --> 00:23:47.460 If you try to force your abstract concept of 00:23:47.460 --> 00:23:49.579 sovereignty on them, they will cast your sovereignty 00:23:49.579 --> 00:23:51.440 in your face. And that is exactly what happened. 00:23:51.500 --> 00:23:53.400 They threw the tea in the harbor and the sovereignty 00:23:53.400 --> 00:23:56.099 right back at them. It is. And he made another 00:23:56.099 --> 00:23:58.640 really uncomfortable but astute point about slavery. 00:23:59.099 --> 00:24:01.380 He noted that in the southern colonies where 00:24:01.380 --> 00:24:04.019 slavery was most prevalent, the white population 00:24:04.019 --> 00:24:06.539 was even more. fiercely attached to their freedom 00:24:06.539 --> 00:24:09.059 than in the North. Why was that? Because, as 00:24:09.059 --> 00:24:11.599 Burke put it, freedom is to them not only an 00:24:11.599 --> 00:24:13.579 enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. 00:24:14.039 --> 00:24:17.599 They saw the stark alternative every single day. 00:24:17.779 --> 00:24:19.839 They knew exactly what it looked like to be a 00:24:19.839 --> 00:24:22.500 subject, a slave. So they were hypersensitive 00:24:22.500 --> 00:24:25.980 to any attempt by Britain to, in their eyes, 00:24:26.160 --> 00:24:28.940 enslave them. He told Parliament flat out, you 00:24:28.940 --> 00:24:31.680 cannot argue a whole people into slavery. But 00:24:31.680 --> 00:24:34.490 they didn't listen. His resolutions for peace 00:24:34.490 --> 00:24:37.289 were ignored. The war started. And Burke was. 00:24:37.910 --> 00:24:40.569 He was despondent. He was heartbroken. He saw 00:24:40.569 --> 00:24:42.509 it as a civil war. He couldn't even bring himself 00:24:42.509 --> 00:24:44.730 to celebrate British victories over the Americans. 00:24:44.910 --> 00:24:46.910 He felt that the British public who were cheering 00:24:46.910 --> 00:24:49.190 for the war were showing signs of a deep moral 00:24:49.190 --> 00:24:51.789 rot. He wrote that the English national character 00:24:51.789 --> 00:24:53.509 was changing, that people were becoming less 00:24:53.509 --> 00:24:55.430 fiery and jealous of their own liberty and more 00:24:55.430 --> 00:24:58.109 authoritarian. So on America, he's the clear 00:24:58.109 --> 00:25:00.390 champion of liberty against overbearing power. 00:25:00.950 --> 00:25:03.150 Now, let's pivot halfway around the world to 00:25:03.150 --> 00:25:05.569 the East, because if America was about the abuse 00:25:05.569 --> 00:25:08.329 of legislative power, India was about the abuse 00:25:08.329 --> 00:25:10.710 of corporate power. This is a huge, and I mean 00:25:10.710 --> 00:25:13.250 huge, part of his life's work that often gets 00:25:13.250 --> 00:25:15.230 skipped over in the textbooks, but it consumed 00:25:15.230 --> 00:25:18.450 him for the better part of two decades. Burke 00:25:18.450 --> 00:25:21.529 was obsessed with bringing justice to India. 00:25:21.769 --> 00:25:23.089 And we're talking specifically about the East 00:25:23.089 --> 00:25:25.630 India Company. The company, yes. And we have 00:25:25.630 --> 00:25:27.670 to be clear, they weren't just a business selling 00:25:27.670 --> 00:25:30.789 tea and spices anymore. By this point... They 00:25:30.789 --> 00:25:33.029 were a de facto government. They controlled the 00:25:33.029 --> 00:25:35.430 entire province of Bengal. They had a massive 00:25:35.430 --> 00:25:39.250 private army. And Burke saw them as a rogue state, 00:25:39.349 --> 00:25:42.549 a vehicle for what he called Indianism, which 00:25:42.549 --> 00:25:45.069 was his term for unchecked corporate tyranny. 00:25:45.190 --> 00:25:47.769 And in this story, he found his ultimate villain 00:25:47.769 --> 00:25:51.390 in one man, Warren Hastings. Warren Hastings, 00:25:51.450 --> 00:25:54.339 the governor general of Bengal. For Burke, Hastings 00:25:54.339 --> 00:25:56.619 personified everything that was wrong with British 00:25:56.619 --> 00:25:59.680 rule in India, and Burke spearheaded the impeachment 00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:03.420 of Hastings. The trial began in 1788 in Westminster 00:26:03.420 --> 00:26:05.920 Hall, and it was the trial of the century, a 00:26:05.920 --> 00:26:08.500 massive public spectacle. And Burke was the lead 00:26:08.500 --> 00:26:10.779 prosecutor. From what I've read, he did not hold 00:26:10.779 --> 00:26:13.259 back with his language. Oh, not at all. Burke 00:26:13.259 --> 00:26:15.480 was never one for subtle language when he was 00:26:15.480 --> 00:26:18.519 morally outraged. I have some of the insults 00:26:18.519 --> 00:26:21.220 he threw at Hastings here. He called him a Captain 00:26:21.220 --> 00:26:24.160 General of Iniquity. Wow. He called him a spider 00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:27.680 of hell, a ravenous vulture devouring the carcasses 00:26:27.680 --> 00:26:30.059 of the dead. A spider of hell. You don't hear 00:26:30.059 --> 00:26:31.779 that in parliamentary debates anymore. You do 00:26:31.779 --> 00:26:34.619 not. But the anger was genuine. He wasn't just 00:26:34.619 --> 00:26:36.980 performing. He had spent years studying the reports 00:26:36.980 --> 00:26:39.299 coming out of India. He gave this incredible 00:26:39.299 --> 00:26:41.819 speech on a subject called the Nabob of Arquette's 00:26:41.819 --> 00:26:44.339 debts, where he described in horrifying detail 00:26:44.339 --> 00:26:46.700 the devastation of the Indian infrastructure. 00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:49.460 He talked about how the company's greed had led 00:26:49.460 --> 00:26:52.019 to the ruin of ancient reservoirs and water systems, 00:26:52.200 --> 00:26:54.640 causing famine and death on a massive scale. 00:26:54.960 --> 00:26:57.259 So he's painting this picture of a sophisticated 00:26:57.259 --> 00:27:01.000 ancient civilization being plundered and destroyed 00:27:01.000 --> 00:27:04.359 by a bunch of young, greedy British upstarts. 00:27:04.380 --> 00:27:06.799 That's exactly it. And this brings us to one 00:27:06.799 --> 00:27:09.259 of his most important and enduring philosophical 00:27:09.259 --> 00:27:14.049 contributions, his attack on what he called Geographical 00:27:14.049 --> 00:27:16.890 morality. Geographical morality. That's a key 00:27:16.890 --> 00:27:19.470 term. What does he mean by that? Well, the defense 00:27:19.470 --> 00:27:22.029 team for Hastings and the company basically argued 00:27:22.029 --> 00:27:25.289 this. Look, you can't judge us by the gentle 00:27:25.289 --> 00:27:28.069 standards of British society. This is India. 00:27:28.269 --> 00:27:30.730 Things are different over there. Despotism is 00:27:30.730 --> 00:27:32.930 the normal way of doing things in the East. We 00:27:32.930 --> 00:27:35.130 are just playing by the local rules to survive. 00:27:35.630 --> 00:27:39.230 So it's a kind of when in Rome, do as the Romans 00:27:39.230 --> 00:27:42.700 do. but applied to tyranny and corruption. Right. 00:27:42.839 --> 00:27:45.740 It's the idea that what's immoral in London can 00:27:45.740 --> 00:27:48.559 be perfectly acceptable in Calcutta. And Burke 00:27:48.559 --> 00:27:51.640 just erupts at this idea. He says rubbish. He 00:27:51.640 --> 00:27:53.859 argues that morality is universal. He says the 00:27:53.859 --> 00:27:56.119 laws of morality are the same everywhere. If 00:27:56.119 --> 00:27:58.539 it is wrong to rob and starve and torture people 00:27:58.539 --> 00:28:01.019 in London, it is just as wrong to rob and starve 00:28:01.019 --> 00:28:03.809 and torture them in India. That is a surprisingly 00:28:03.809 --> 00:28:06.289 modern take. He's basically arguing for a concept 00:28:06.289 --> 00:28:08.470 of universal human rights before that was really 00:28:08.470 --> 00:28:10.869 a codified thing. He is. He viewed the British 00:28:10.869 --> 00:28:13.849 Empire as a trust. He believed Britain had a 00:28:13.849 --> 00:28:16.829 sacred moral duty to govern for the benefit of 00:28:16.829 --> 00:28:19.410 the subject people. And if the empire wasn't 00:28:19.410 --> 00:28:21.549 benefiting the Indians, he said it had no right 00:28:21.549 --> 00:28:24.440 to exist. So he wasn't an anti -imperialist in 00:28:24.440 --> 00:28:26.720 the modern sense. He wasn't saying, and the empire, 00:28:27.019 --> 00:28:30.079 but he was saying the empire must be moral. Correct. 00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:33.519 It must be accountable to a higher law. And he 00:28:33.519 --> 00:28:36.180 applied this thinking to slavery, too. He detested 00:28:36.180 --> 00:28:38.759 the slave trade. He called it a diabolical practice, 00:28:39.119 --> 00:28:42.279 a weed that grows in every soil. And he actually 00:28:42.279 --> 00:28:45.140 tried to do something about it. He did. He drafted 00:28:45.140 --> 00:28:47.880 a detailed plan for the gradual abolition of 00:28:47.880 --> 00:28:50.579 slavery. Now, we have to be honest here. He was 00:28:50.579 --> 00:28:53.400 a gradualist. His plan included things like having 00:28:53.400 --> 00:28:56.259 inspectors and protectors. But it was based on 00:28:56.259 --> 00:28:58.940 the paternalistic 18th century view that slaves 00:28:58.940 --> 00:29:01.539 needed to be civilized and prepared for freedom. 00:29:01.559 --> 00:29:03.900 So not a radical abolitionist like Wilberforce 00:29:03.900 --> 00:29:06.619 would later be. No. But compared to the vast 00:29:06.619 --> 00:29:09.240 majority of his peers, who saw slaves as nothing 00:29:09.240 --> 00:29:11.740 more than property, he was miles ahead. He saw 00:29:11.740 --> 00:29:13.980 their humanity. Okay, let's look at the scoreboard 00:29:13.980 --> 00:29:17.299 so far. It's 1788. He has defended the American 00:29:17.299 --> 00:29:19.799 rebels against the crown. He's defended Irish 00:29:19.799 --> 00:29:22.200 Catholics against the Protestant elite. He's 00:29:22.200 --> 00:29:24.579 attacked corporate corruption in India. He hates 00:29:24.579 --> 00:29:27.380 slavery. If you stop the biography right there, 00:29:27.480 --> 00:29:29.619 you see Edmund Burke, the great liberal hero. 00:29:29.819 --> 00:29:32.339 Full stop. He absolutely would. And the Whigs, 00:29:32.359 --> 00:29:35.079 the liberal reformist party of the day, they 00:29:35.079 --> 00:29:37.420 loved him. He was their intellectual heavyweight, 00:29:37.480 --> 00:29:41.119 their conscience. And then comes July 14th, 1789. 00:29:41.460 --> 00:29:44.109 The Bastille is stormed in Paris. The French 00:29:44.109 --> 00:29:46.869 Revolution begins. The king is stripped of his 00:29:46.869 --> 00:29:49.650 power. The Declaration of the Rights of Man is 00:29:49.650 --> 00:29:52.089 published. And the Whigs in London, his friends 00:29:52.089 --> 00:29:54.309 and colleagues, are popping champagne. They're 00:29:54.309 --> 00:29:56.690 ecstatic. They think this is Act II of the American 00:29:56.690 --> 00:29:59.329 Revolution or maybe a French version of Britain's 00:29:59.329 --> 00:30:02.349 own glorious revolution of 1688. They think, 00:30:02.349 --> 00:30:04.650 finally, the French are throwing off their tyrant 00:30:04.650 --> 00:30:06.549 and becoming like us. But Burke looks at the 00:30:06.549 --> 00:30:09.109 exact same events, the same speeches, the same 00:30:09.109 --> 00:30:11.609 riots, the same declarations, and he sees a horror 00:30:11.609 --> 00:30:14.569 movie. He doesn't cheer. He recoils. Why? What 00:30:14.569 --> 00:30:16.670 did he see that everyone else missed? He saw 00:30:16.670 --> 00:30:19.230 the triumph of abstract theory over concrete 00:30:19.230 --> 00:30:21.950 reality. And this leads to his most famous and 00:30:21.950 --> 00:30:24.849 influential work, his masterpiece, Reflections 00:30:24.849 --> 00:30:26.970 on the Revolution in France, which he published 00:30:26.970 --> 00:30:30.309 in 1790. This book just exploded the political 00:30:30.309 --> 00:30:32.710 landscape, didn't it? It broke everything. It 00:30:32.710 --> 00:30:35.589 split his party. It ended his closest friendships. 00:30:35.789 --> 00:30:38.549 And it laid the foundation for modern conservatism. 00:30:38.670 --> 00:30:41.089 And the core argument comes down to the difference 00:30:41.089 --> 00:30:44.970 between abstract rights and what he would call 00:30:44.970 --> 00:30:48.349 prescriptive or inherited rights. This is probably 00:30:48.349 --> 00:30:50.829 the hardest Burkine concept to grasp, but it's 00:30:50.829 --> 00:30:52.869 the most important. It is the absolute T. So 00:30:52.869 --> 00:30:54.390 let's break it down very carefully. What is an 00:30:54.390 --> 00:30:58.049 abstract right? Okay. An abstract right is a 00:30:58.049 --> 00:31:01.029 right that you deduce from pure reason. Imagine 00:31:01.029 --> 00:31:03.150 you sit down in a coffee shop today with a blank 00:31:03.150 --> 00:31:05.630 piece of paper and you write a list of things 00:31:05.630 --> 00:31:07.809 every human being should have just by virtue 00:31:07.809 --> 00:31:10.329 of being human. Every human has a right to happiness. 00:31:10.549 --> 00:31:13.170 Every human has a right to property. Every human 00:31:13.170 --> 00:31:15.529 has a right to a say in their government. That's 00:31:15.529 --> 00:31:17.809 the rights of man. That's the French Declaration 00:31:17.809 --> 00:31:20.970 of the Rights of Man. It comes from pure theory. 00:31:21.190 --> 00:31:24.009 It sounds wonderful. It sounds self -evident. 00:31:24.190 --> 00:31:26.130 Who could possibly argue with that? Burke would. 00:31:26.289 --> 00:31:27.950 He'd say, that's lovely. It's a nice theory. 00:31:28.109 --> 00:31:29.950 But what does it mean in practice, he'd ask. 00:31:30.289 --> 00:31:33.049 OK, you have a theoretical right to property. 00:31:33.470 --> 00:31:36.390 But is there a law in your country that actually 00:31:36.390 --> 00:31:39.150 protects it? Is there a court that will enforce 00:31:39.150 --> 00:31:41.910 that law? Is there a police force that will arrest 00:31:41.910 --> 00:31:45.180 the person who violates it? Burke argued that 00:31:45.180 --> 00:31:47.680 a right doesn't exist just because you can imagine 00:31:47.680 --> 00:31:50.460 it or write it on a piece of paper. It only exists 00:31:50.460 --> 00:31:53.200 if it's real, if it's enforceable. Yes, if it 00:31:53.200 --> 00:31:55.960 has been woven into the actual fabric of a specific 00:31:55.960 --> 00:31:58.740 society over a long period of time, which is 00:31:58.740 --> 00:32:00.740 why he preferred what he called the rights of 00:32:00.740 --> 00:32:03.240 Englishmen. So rights as an inheritance, not 00:32:03.240 --> 00:32:05.960 a theory. Precisely. Think of your rights like 00:32:05.960 --> 00:32:09.079 a house. You don't just conjure a beautiful house 00:32:09.079 --> 00:32:11.440 out of thin air based on a perfect architectural 00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:14.440 drawing. You inherit a real house from your grandfather 00:32:14.440 --> 00:32:16.900 who built the solid foundation. Your father added 00:32:16.900 --> 00:32:19.640 a new room. You come along and you fix the leaky 00:32:19.640 --> 00:32:22.640 roof. You have the right to trial by jury in 00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:25.220 England, not because all humans have it in the 00:32:25.220 --> 00:32:28.440 abstract, but because Englishmen fought and died 00:32:28.440 --> 00:32:30.859 for it in the Magna Carta and defended it in 00:32:30.859 --> 00:32:34.539 1688. And it was handed down to you as a specific 00:32:34.539 --> 00:32:37.579 concrete inheritance. It's an heirloom, not just 00:32:37.579 --> 00:32:40.019 an idea. It's a precious heirloom. And because 00:32:40.019 --> 00:32:41.960 it's an heirloom, you treat it with respect. 00:32:42.480 --> 00:32:44.440 You don't take a sledgehammer to the whole house 00:32:44.440 --> 00:32:46.539 just because the floorboards squeak. You carefully 00:32:46.539 --> 00:32:49.819 fix the floorboards. Burke saw the French revolutionaries 00:32:49.819 --> 00:32:51.960 taking a slave hammer to their entire history, 00:32:52.059 --> 00:32:54.519 the church, the calendar, the monarchy, the nobility, 00:32:54.660 --> 00:32:56.740 thinking they could just design a better country 00:32:56.740 --> 00:32:59.259 from scratch on a blank piece of paper. And that 00:32:59.259 --> 00:33:01.910 terrified him. It terrified him because he believed 00:33:01.910 --> 00:33:04.529 that human society is infinitely more complex 00:33:04.529 --> 00:33:09.490 than any one generation can possibly understand. 00:33:09.990 --> 00:33:12.589 This leads to his most profound statement on 00:33:12.589 --> 00:33:15.589 the nature of society. He wrote that society 00:33:15.589 --> 00:33:17.970 is a partnership. Oh, this quote is incredible. 00:33:18.269 --> 00:33:20.269 A partnership not only between those who are 00:33:20.269 --> 00:33:22.589 living, but between those who are living, those 00:33:22.589 --> 00:33:25.109 who are dead and those who are to be born. That 00:33:25.109 --> 00:33:27.890 is such a heavy concept. It's a contract across 00:33:27.890 --> 00:33:31.309 time. If you destroy your institutions, you are 00:33:31.309 --> 00:33:33.369 stealing from your ancestors and you are cheating 00:33:33.369 --> 00:33:35.430 your descendants. Yes. You're breaking the chain. 00:33:35.789 --> 00:33:38.329 This is why he defended these institutions, the 00:33:38.329 --> 00:33:41.450 pleasing illusions and the drapery of life. He 00:33:41.450 --> 00:33:43.849 admitted that logically, a king is just a man. 00:33:43.890 --> 00:33:46.789 A queen is just a woman. But if you strip away 00:33:46.789 --> 00:33:49.170 all the pomp, the ceremony, the traditions that 00:33:49.170 --> 00:33:51.589 make power gentle and legitimate, you are left 00:33:51.589 --> 00:33:54.630 with nothing but naked, brutal power. And naked 00:33:54.630 --> 00:33:57.630 power is ugly. This leads us to that famous and 00:33:57.630 --> 00:33:59.690 very controversial Marie Antoinette passage. 00:34:00.359 --> 00:34:02.299 oh this is the part of the book that drew the 00:34:02.299 --> 00:34:05.819 most fire then and now he recounts seeing the 00:34:05.819 --> 00:34:08.199 queen of france years before as a young princess 00:34:08.199 --> 00:34:11.260 and he describes her as a delightful vision like 00:34:11.260 --> 00:34:14.480 a morning star and he laments her fall from grace 00:34:14.480 --> 00:34:17.139 her humiliation by the mob and then he writes 00:34:17.139 --> 00:34:20.869 that iconic line He writes, but the age of chivalry 00:34:20.869 --> 00:34:24.469 is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators 00:34:24.469 --> 00:34:27.570 has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished 00:34:27.570 --> 00:34:30.329 forever. Sophisters, economists and calculators. 00:34:30.409 --> 00:34:33.409 He is basically predicting the rise of the cold, 00:34:33.510 --> 00:34:36.730 rational, technocratic mindset. But this passage 00:34:36.730 --> 00:34:39.760 got him absolutely roasted, didn't it? Massive, 00:34:39.760 --> 00:34:42.159 massive backlash. Thomas Paine wrote his book 00:34:42.159 --> 00:34:44.900 Rights of Man specifically as a blistering rebuttal 00:34:44.900 --> 00:34:47.000 to Burke. And Mary Wollstonecraft, the great 00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:49.239 feminist thinker, wrote A Vindication of the 00:34:49.239 --> 00:34:51.219 Rights of Men. And Paine had that absolutely 00:34:51.219 --> 00:34:53.559 biting line about Burke. He did. He said Burke 00:34:53.559 --> 00:34:56.000 pities the plumage but forgets the dying bird. 00:34:56.179 --> 00:34:58.719 Ouch. The meaning being that Burke is crying 00:34:58.719 --> 00:35:01.119 over the queen's fancy clothes and her lost dignity 00:35:01.119 --> 00:35:03.460 while completely ignoring the French peasants 00:35:03.460 --> 00:35:05.300 who were starving to death under the old regime. 00:35:05.769 --> 00:35:08.449 And it was a fair critique in some ways. Burke 00:35:08.449 --> 00:35:11.369 was romanticizing a deeply flawed and unjust 00:35:11.369 --> 00:35:13.989 system. But Burke's deeper point wasn't that 00:35:13.989 --> 00:35:16.929 the old regime was perfect. His point was that 00:35:16.929 --> 00:35:19.469 if you tear down the plumage, the culture, the 00:35:19.469 --> 00:35:22.110 manners, the religion, the traditions that soften 00:35:22.110 --> 00:35:25.579 power, You don't get a healthy free bird. You 00:35:25.579 --> 00:35:27.820 get a vulture. You get the guillotine. And he 00:35:27.820 --> 00:35:29.699 was right about the violence. He predicted the 00:35:29.699 --> 00:35:31.539 reign of terror years before it happened. He 00:35:31.539 --> 00:35:33.639 was. He saw that once you destroy traditional 00:35:33.639 --> 00:35:36.659 authority, the things people obey out of habit, 00:35:36.760 --> 00:35:39.800 affection, and respect, the only thing left to 00:35:39.800 --> 00:35:43.219 make people obey is naked force. Terror. And 00:35:43.219 --> 00:35:46.119 this issue, this book. It just split the Whig 00:35:46.119 --> 00:35:48.639 Party in two. It destroyed his closest friendships, 00:35:48.860 --> 00:35:50.860 most famously his friendship with Charles James 00:35:50.860 --> 00:35:53.539 Fox. That moment is one of the great tragedies 00:35:53.539 --> 00:35:55.619 of British political history. Fox and Burke were 00:35:55.619 --> 00:35:57.639 the closest of friends and political allies for 00:35:57.639 --> 00:36:00.679 decades. But Fox was a romantic, and he loved 00:36:00.679 --> 00:36:02.739 the French Revolution. And this led to a final 00:36:02.739 --> 00:36:05.739 public break in Parliament. It did. In a debate 00:36:05.739 --> 00:36:09.260 in 1791, Fox gave a speech praising the new French 00:36:09.260 --> 00:36:12.079 Constitution. Burke then stood up and delivered 00:36:12.079 --> 00:36:15.480 a furious condemnation of it. As he spoke, Fox, 00:36:15.780 --> 00:36:17.360 who was sitting next to him, leaned over and 00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:20.420 whispered, There is no loss of friendship. And 00:36:20.420 --> 00:36:23.190 Burke's reply. Burke replied, loud enough for 00:36:23.190 --> 00:36:25.130 the whole House of Commons to hear. I regret 00:36:25.130 --> 00:36:27.730 to say there is. I have done my duty, though 00:36:27.730 --> 00:36:30.030 I have lost my friend. There is a loss of friends. 00:36:30.170 --> 00:36:32.630 I know the price of my conduct. Fox actually 00:36:32.630 --> 00:36:35.590 wept in his seat. He did. Tears were seen rolling 00:36:35.590 --> 00:36:38.210 down his cheeks. It was the end of an era, the 00:36:38.210 --> 00:36:40.929 end of a great political partnership. But Burke 00:36:40.929 --> 00:36:43.570 felt he had no choice. He was convinced that 00:36:43.570 --> 00:36:45.849 French ideas were a contagion that would destroy 00:36:45.849 --> 00:36:48.150 Britain if they weren't stopped. He became almost 00:36:48.150 --> 00:36:50.820 a man possessed by this idea, which leads. to 00:36:50.820 --> 00:36:53.639 the dramatic dagger scene. Oh, yes. This is pure 00:36:53.639 --> 00:36:57.179 political theater. In 1792, Burke is giving a 00:36:57.179 --> 00:36:59.800 speech on the dangers of French agents in Britain. 00:36:59.980 --> 00:37:02.519 He claims that thousands of daggers have been 00:37:02.519 --> 00:37:04.679 ordered from the city of Birmingham to be used 00:37:04.679 --> 00:37:07.280 by French revolutionaries. And to prove his point, 00:37:07.340 --> 00:37:10.809 he reaches into his coat. whips out a real dagger 00:37:10.809 --> 00:37:12.909 and throws it onto the floor of the House of 00:37:12.909 --> 00:37:16.090 Commons. A literal mic drop, but with a weapon. 00:37:16.230 --> 00:37:18.369 It clattered on the floorboards and he shouted, 00:37:18.510 --> 00:37:20.750 This is what you are to gain by an alliance with 00:37:20.750 --> 00:37:23.130 France. This is the fraternity they offer you. 00:37:23.369 --> 00:37:26.210 That is just intense. Some of his old friends 00:37:26.210 --> 00:37:28.110 thought he was going mad, right? That he'd lost 00:37:28.110 --> 00:37:30.309 his mind. They did. They thought he'd become 00:37:30.309 --> 00:37:34.610 a paranoid, unhinged reactionary. But his predictions 00:37:34.610 --> 00:37:37.170 just kept coming true. He didn't just predict 00:37:37.170 --> 00:37:39.550 the guillotine. He predicted... Napoleon. How 00:37:39.550 --> 00:37:41.670 did he do that? In the Reflections, he wrote 00:37:41.670 --> 00:37:43.730 that as the revolution descended into chaos, 00:37:44.010 --> 00:37:46.190 the French Assembly would eventually lose control 00:37:46.190 --> 00:37:49.150 to its own army. And he said that some popular 00:37:49.150 --> 00:37:51.869 general who understands the art of conciliating 00:37:51.869 --> 00:37:54.269 the soldiery shall become the master of your 00:37:54.269 --> 00:37:56.570 whole republic. Which is exactly what happened 00:37:56.570 --> 00:37:58.949 with Napoleon Bonaparte a few years later. And 00:37:58.949 --> 00:38:01.550 even deeper than that, you could argue that Burke 00:38:01.550 --> 00:38:04.570 was the first person to describe the modern totalitarian 00:38:04.570 --> 00:38:07.400 state. How so? He saw that the new French state 00:38:07.400 --> 00:38:09.699 wasn't just changing the government. It was trying 00:38:09.699 --> 00:38:12.480 to change everything. They changed the calendar. 00:38:12.619 --> 00:38:14.739 They abolished the old provinces. They tried 00:38:14.739 --> 00:38:16.699 to create a new state religion. They changed 00:38:16.699 --> 00:38:18.619 the names of the months. They policed the way 00:38:18.619 --> 00:38:21.400 people spoke. He wrote in his later letters that 00:38:21.400 --> 00:38:25.139 this new state had dominion and conquest for 00:38:25.139 --> 00:38:28.460 its sole object's dominion over minds by proselytism, 00:38:28.500 --> 00:38:31.579 over bodies by arms. He saw that a state based 00:38:31.579 --> 00:38:35.739 on a pure, abstract ideology recognizes no limits. 00:38:35.880 --> 00:38:39.139 It has to control your mind. That sounds terrifyingly 00:38:39.139 --> 00:38:41.599 like the 20th century. It connects directly to 00:38:41.599 --> 00:38:43.980 the horrors of the 20th century. That's why Burke 00:38:43.980 --> 00:38:46.860 is still read. He warned us 200 years in advance 00:38:46.860 --> 00:38:49.119 about what happens when you try to create a perfect 00:38:49.119 --> 00:38:52.079 utopia by tearing up all the roots of an existing 00:38:52.079 --> 00:38:54.780 society. So Burke spends his final years as this 00:38:54.780 --> 00:38:57.340 sort of prophet of doom, shouting about the dangers 00:38:57.340 --> 00:39:00.019 from France. But his personal life was crumbling 00:39:00.019 --> 00:39:03.409 at the same time. It was incredibly tragic. He 00:39:03.409 --> 00:39:06.650 retired from Parliament in 1794, right after 00:39:06.650 --> 00:39:09.550 the Hastings trial finally ended. He had hoped 00:39:09.550 --> 00:39:11.309 that his son, Richard, would take his seat in 00:39:11.309 --> 00:39:13.730 Parliament and carry on his work. Richard was 00:39:13.730 --> 00:39:15.989 his pride and joy, the center of his universe. 00:39:16.369 --> 00:39:19.670 But it wasn't to be. No. Richard died suddenly 00:39:19.670 --> 00:39:22.250 of tuberculosis that same year, and Burke was... 00:39:22.519 --> 00:39:25.059 utterly devastated he's broken by it completely 00:39:25.059 --> 00:39:28.079 broken he described himself as an old oak torn 00:39:28.079 --> 00:39:30.880 up by the roots he said the world was now a blank 00:39:30.880 --> 00:39:33.579 to him without his son he felt he had no future 00:39:33.579 --> 00:39:36.119 to leave behind but even in his grief he could 00:39:36.119 --> 00:39:39.400 still fight he wrote one last great piece the 00:39:39.400 --> 00:39:43.829 letter to a noble lord In 1796, this was a ferocious 00:39:43.829 --> 00:39:47.250 clapback, wasn't it? A massive, righteous clapback. 00:39:47.369 --> 00:39:50.730 The Duke of Bedford, a young, super -rich aristocrat 00:39:50.730 --> 00:39:52.610 who sympathized with the French Revolution, had 00:39:52.610 --> 00:39:54.469 attacked Burke in the House of Lords for accepting 00:39:54.469 --> 00:39:56.670 a government pension. He basically said, why 00:39:56.670 --> 00:39:58.590 is this old commoner getting money from the taxpayers? 00:39:59.030 --> 00:40:00.989 Which is pretty rich, coming from a duke whose 00:40:00.989 --> 00:40:03.789 entire fortune was inherited. Exactly. And Burke 00:40:03.789 --> 00:40:06.809 just tears him apart. He contrasts his own life 00:40:06.809 --> 00:40:09.449 of hard work and public service, his earned pension, 00:40:09.690 --> 00:40:12.050 with the Duke's unearned inherited privilege. 00:40:12.329 --> 00:40:15.030 And he reminds the Duke with devastating historical 00:40:15.030 --> 00:40:18.289 detail that the vast wealth of the Bedford family 00:40:18.289 --> 00:40:21.829 came directly from King Henry VIII looting the 00:40:21.829 --> 00:40:24.210 Catholic Church during the Reformation. So he's 00:40:24.210 --> 00:40:26.469 saying, don't you dare talk to me about where 00:40:26.469 --> 00:40:29.269 money comes from. Your entire fortune is founded 00:40:29.269 --> 00:40:31.719 on an act of revolutionary plunder. And then 00:40:31.719 --> 00:40:33.920 he delivers the killer blow. He warns the Duke, 00:40:34.059 --> 00:40:36.480 the French revolutionaries you are flirting with, 00:40:36.599 --> 00:40:38.760 they don't care about your liberal ideas. They 00:40:38.760 --> 00:40:41.000 will treat you and your property just like they 00:40:41.000 --> 00:40:42.980 treated the French nobility. They will shop you 00:40:42.980 --> 00:40:45.719 up. He calls the revolutionaries the minters 00:40:45.719 --> 00:40:48.380 of coin who will happily melt down the Duke's 00:40:48.380 --> 00:40:50.579 coronet without a second thought. Burke, the 00:40:50.579 --> 00:40:52.920 commoner, defending his own merit against an 00:40:52.920 --> 00:40:55.760 aristocrat. It shows again that he wasn't a blind 00:40:55.760 --> 00:40:58.460 defender of the rich. He was a defender of order, 00:40:58.599 --> 00:41:01.869 but he believed in earned worth. And he believed 00:41:01.869 --> 00:41:04.190 in free markets, too. We haven't touched on that 00:41:04.190 --> 00:41:06.530 much, but it's an important part of his thought. 00:41:07.090 --> 00:41:09.570 Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism, 00:41:09.789 --> 00:41:12.550 apparently said that Burke was the only man he 00:41:12.550 --> 00:41:14.849 knew who thought exactly as he did on economics 00:41:14.849 --> 00:41:17.809 without any prior communication. And Burke wrote 00:41:17.809 --> 00:41:20.550 a piece on this, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, 00:41:20.690 --> 00:41:24.769 in 1795. Yes, during a terrible famine. And while 00:41:24.769 --> 00:41:26.670 others were calling for government price controls 00:41:26.670 --> 00:41:29.650 and wage fixing, Burke argued against it. He 00:41:29.650 --> 00:41:32.489 believed in the natural price of the market and 00:41:32.489 --> 00:41:34.429 that government interference would only make 00:41:34.429 --> 00:41:37.630 the scarcity worse. So economically, you could 00:41:37.630 --> 00:41:40.130 call him a classical liberal. Okay, before we 00:41:40.130 --> 00:41:41.750 get to the end of his life and sum it all up, 00:41:41.789 --> 00:41:44.809 we have to do the debunking, the quote. The only 00:41:44.809 --> 00:41:47.349 thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for 00:41:47.349 --> 00:41:50.190 good men to do nothing. It's a fantastic quote. 00:41:50.230 --> 00:41:52.789 It's powerful. It's memorable. It's on mugs, 00:41:52.829 --> 00:41:55.730 t -shirts, inspirational posters. But Edmund 00:41:55.730 --> 00:41:57.710 Burke never wrote it. He did not. It appears 00:41:57.710 --> 00:41:59.750 nowhere in his collected works. So where does 00:41:59.750 --> 00:42:01.289 it come from? How did it get attached to him? 00:42:01.630 --> 00:42:03.909 It's a mutation. It's an evolution of an idea 00:42:03.909 --> 00:42:06.789 he did express. The closest thing he actually 00:42:06.789 --> 00:42:09.329 wrote was way back in thoughts on the cause of 00:42:09.329 --> 00:42:12.309 the present discontents back in 1770 when he 00:42:12.309 --> 00:42:14.329 was arguing for political parties. He wrote, 00:42:14.670 --> 00:42:17.510 When bad men combine, the good must associate, 00:42:17.889 --> 00:42:21.449 else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice 00:42:21.449 --> 00:42:24.469 and a contemptible struggle. When bad men combine, 00:42:24.750 --> 00:42:26.869 the good must associate. It carries the same 00:42:26.869 --> 00:42:29.690 core meaning that you need collective action 00:42:29.690 --> 00:42:32.309 to stop evil. But the phrasing is different. 00:42:32.369 --> 00:42:34.369 It's more specific. It is. It's about organization, 00:42:34.610 --> 00:42:37.429 not just individual inaction. And the good men 00:42:37.429 --> 00:42:39.590 do nothing version probably evolved over the 00:42:39.590 --> 00:42:41.750 19th and 20th centuries, getting punchier and 00:42:41.750 --> 00:42:44.269 more memorable with every misquotation until 00:42:44.269 --> 00:42:46.590 it stuck to Burke, who seemed like the most likely 00:42:46.590 --> 00:42:49.550 author. But the sentiment is pure Burke. Evil 00:42:49.550 --> 00:42:51.949 is organized. Therefore, good must be organized, 00:42:52.070 --> 00:42:55.809 too. Burke died in 1797, likely of stomach cancer. 00:42:56.050 --> 00:42:58.829 And he was buried in Beaconsfield in an unmarked 00:42:58.829 --> 00:43:01.340 grave at his own request. Which is a telling 00:43:01.340 --> 00:43:03.719 detail. He did that to avoid his grave being 00:43:03.719 --> 00:43:06.239 desecrated by French Jacobins if they ever invaded 00:43:06.239 --> 00:43:09.480 England. He was genuinely terrified right up 00:43:09.480 --> 00:43:11.719 to the end that the revolution was coming for 00:43:11.719 --> 00:43:14.119 him. He died fearing the world he knew was ending. 00:43:14.599 --> 00:43:17.280 He didn't live to see that his ideas would eventually 00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:19.559 help steal Britain's resolve against Napoleon 00:43:19.559 --> 00:43:22.579 and stabilize Europe for a century. He died in 00:43:22.579 --> 00:43:25.059 the dark not knowing his own legacy. So let's 00:43:25.059 --> 00:43:27.260 bring it all home. We started with the paradox. 00:43:28.059 --> 00:43:30.699 The liberal conservative. the man who supported 00:43:30.699 --> 00:43:33.559 one revolution and condemned another. How do 00:43:33.559 --> 00:43:36.019 we sum this up? How do we solve the riddle? I 00:43:36.019 --> 00:43:38.639 think the key, the one consistent thread through 00:43:38.639 --> 00:43:42.460 his entire life is this. Burke hated the abuse 00:43:42.460 --> 00:43:44.980 of power. Simple as that. Whether that abuse 00:43:44.980 --> 00:43:47.340 came from a king and his government in America, 00:43:47.480 --> 00:43:50.159 a powerful corporation in India, or a revolutionary 00:43:50.159 --> 00:43:52.800 mob in France. That's a great way to frame it. 00:43:52.900 --> 00:43:55.460 The source of the threat changed, but his principle 00:43:55.460 --> 00:43:58.900 didn't. Exactly. In America and India, he defended 00:43:58.900 --> 00:44:00.940 liberty because established power was crushing 00:44:00.940 --> 00:44:03.559 it. In France, he defended order and tradition 00:44:03.559 --> 00:44:06.460 because a new ideological power was crushing 00:44:06.460 --> 00:44:09.239 them. He believed that liberty is only possible 00:44:09.239 --> 00:44:11.780 when it is rooted in tradition, order and self 00:44:11.780 --> 00:44:13.860 -restraint. If you have liberty without order, 00:44:13.940 --> 00:44:17.440 you just have chaos. And chaos, for Burke, always, 00:44:17.539 --> 00:44:20.159 always leads to tyranny. He's the guy who's constantly 00:44:20.159 --> 00:44:21.920 saying, be careful, don't tear down the fence 00:44:21.920 --> 00:44:23.920 until you know exactly why it was put up in the 00:44:23.920 --> 00:44:26.760 first place. That is the absolute essence of 00:44:26.760 --> 00:44:29.579 Burkean conservatism. It's not about never changing. 00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:32.800 He believed a state that cannot change cannot 00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:35.400 preserve itself. It's about changing carefully, 00:44:35.760 --> 00:44:39.159 reforming in order to preserve, not innovating 00:44:39.159 --> 00:44:41.610 in order to destroy. I want to leave our listeners 00:44:41.610 --> 00:44:43.829 with a final thought, one that struck me while 00:44:43.829 --> 00:44:46.809 reading his defense of prejudice. Now, our modern 00:44:46.809 --> 00:44:48.909 world, prejudice is one of the worst words we 00:44:48.909 --> 00:44:51.570 can use. It means bigotry. Right. It has a purely 00:44:51.570 --> 00:44:54.230 negative connotation for us. But Burke used it 00:44:54.230 --> 00:44:56.789 in its original literal sense as a prejudgment. 00:44:57.159 --> 00:44:59.920 He saw it as the wisdom inherent in our habits, 00:45:00.019 --> 00:45:03.320 our gut feelings, our traditions. Yes. He has 00:45:03.320 --> 00:45:06.420 this amazing line, prejudice renders a man's 00:45:06.420 --> 00:45:09.380 virtue his habit. It means you don't have to 00:45:09.380 --> 00:45:11.460 wake up every morning and calculate every moral 00:45:11.460 --> 00:45:14.820 decision from scratch using pure reason. You 00:45:14.820 --> 00:45:17.519 rely on the bank and capital of nations and of 00:45:17.519 --> 00:45:21.000 ages. You rely on the stored wisdom of your culture. 00:45:21.469 --> 00:45:23.530 And that's the provocative question for us today, 00:45:23.650 --> 00:45:26.389 isn't it? We live in a world that loves to deconstruct 00:45:26.389 --> 00:45:28.550 everything. We question every tradition, every 00:45:28.550 --> 00:45:31.449 institution, every norm. We're encouraged to 00:45:31.449 --> 00:45:34.570 start from first principles on everything from 00:45:34.570 --> 00:45:37.909 gender to government to economics. And Burke's 00:45:37.909 --> 00:45:40.690 ghost is standing over our shoulder asking a 00:45:40.690 --> 00:45:43.739 very unsettling question. Are you smart enough 00:45:43.739 --> 00:45:46.400 for that? Do we as individuals really have enough 00:45:46.400 --> 00:45:49.119 intellectual capital to run an entire civilization 00:45:49.119 --> 00:45:51.480 on our own private stock of reason? Or do we 00:45:51.480 --> 00:45:54.179 need the store of wisdom of the past, even the 00:45:54.179 --> 00:45:56.480 parts we don't fully understand or can't logically 00:45:56.480 --> 00:45:58.820 justify, to keep us from falling off the cliff? 00:45:59.019 --> 00:46:00.760 It's a deep and challenging question. Are we 00:46:00.760 --> 00:46:02.880 standing on the shoulders of giants or are we 00:46:02.880 --> 00:46:05.320 busy chopping them down at the knees? Burke would 00:46:05.320 --> 00:46:07.440 have had a very clear answer. A question worth 00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:10.219 chewing on. Thank you for listening to this deep 00:46:10.219 --> 00:46:13.219 dive into Edmund Burke. We hope you view those 00:46:13.219 --> 00:46:15.360 statues a little differently now. And maybe read 00:46:15.360 --> 00:46:17.639 the reflections. It's difficult, but it's worth 00:46:17.639 --> 00:46:20.019 the effort. Until next time, keep diving deep.