OT: The Burke Habit

--Metal content??

Is that where a guy starts collecting Burke millers and cant stop?

Hummmm anybody want a couple? They are collecting dust in my back

40...

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

=================== OT stands for Off Topic.

I suggest that while this article is well written [it should be, it was by a Professor of English] it is far more form than substance. The categories discussed are largely meaningless and are defined in terms of each other, i.e. "conservative" is not "liberal" and "liberal" is not "conservative."

The reader would be well advised to remember that Edmond Burke lived from 1729 to 1797 and was active from 1765 through about

1790. see: The inclusion of the pragmatic philosopher William James in apparent support of the Burke conservative position is incongruent. James, his contemporary Charles Peirce and his successors, John Dewey and James Rorty, overtly rejected the "one revealed truth" [to the elites] model of reality in favor of experience and verification. [See for more on pragmatism.] From my perspective, Pragmatism, with its stress on what works, makes far more sense than the continued veneration of static concepts/dogma from other ages and places in this era of precipitous change, i.e. doctrinaire "conservatism" and "liberalism."

The technical name for the condition when two (or more) directly contradictory things seem to be true, or to logically follow from what appear to be "reality" is a "problematiques." In the past problematiques have been regarded as a philosophical and logical disaster, but currently their resolution has provided considerable insight into the structure of though and language. To get you started the three main reasons are: (1) Using different world for the same idea/concept. This is a tautology as in "the survival of the fittest." (2) Using the same word for different things. (3) Failing to consider the temporal parallax, that is that while the contradictory ideas are "true" they are not true at the same time. For example the statements "you should wear a heavy coat when you go outside to work," and "you should dress very lightly if you are going to work out side" appear to be contradictory, but actually apply to different time of the year.

The whole conservative/liberal Republican/Democrat contest is a fools' game and a con job, with no more meaning than an argument between Carlists and Chartists. The pragmatic bon mot "What you do speaks so loudly I can't hear what you say" is your only safe guide.

Uncle George

Burke milling machine, of course. Boris

The article is available online at .

Joe Gwinn