Edmund Burke & the English Revolution

By |2023-08-15T18:01:08-05:00August 15th, 2023|Categories: Community, Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Revolution, Timeless Essays|Tags: , |

In his “Reflections,” Edmund Burke constructs a powerful myth of English history, defending the consolidated results of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his poem “Blood and the Moon,” Yeats writes of “haughtier-headed Burke that proved the state a tree.” Edmund Burke would have relished the line, having proved nothing of the sort. [...]

Burke on the Inhumanity of the French Revolution

By |2023-07-13T21:23:13-05:00July 13th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Edmund Burke, History, Politics, Revolution, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Whatever its own stated purposes and desired ends, the French Revolution never sought to better the condition of humanity or even of France. The Revolutionaries, as Edmund Burke stressed, were radicals, seeking civil war not only in France, but also in all of Christendom. The grand Anglo-Irish statesman, Edmund Burke (1729-1797) spent much of his [...]

America: Devolution, Revolution, or Renewal?

By |2023-01-16T15:39:14-06:00January 16th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Conservatism, History, Politics, Revolution|

The truth is that for all its failings, America has provided more opportunity, security, and freedom to a group of people more diverse than any other nation in history. It is not because America is systemically rotten; but because it is foundationally good. Justice for all calls for those foundations to be defended, not destroyed. [...]

Secular Revolution & Religious Revival: A History Lesson

By |2021-11-29T12:06:54-06:00November 27th, 2021|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Faith, History, Joseph Pearce, Revolution, Senior Contributors|

History is full of surprises. One such surprise is the manner in which the secularist cataclysm of the French Revolution prompted a religious revival across the Channel in England. It was indeed ironic that the new spirit of absolute religious intolerance in France following that country’s Revolution of 1789 prompted a new spirit of relative [...]

Burke on the French Revolution and Britain’s Role

By |2020-11-15T14:09:43-06:00November 15th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Edmund Burke, England, Government, History, Politics, Revolution, Senior Contributors|

Once the British had returned to first principles and right reason, Edmund Burke argued, they would also be reminded of the practical things, such as good government, the cultivation of the middle class, and the protection of property. In other words, through the fight against the French Revolution, the British would return to being properly [...]

Burke on Monstrous Revolution and Regicide Peace

By |2023-08-10T12:52:00-05:00October 15th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Edmund Burke, Europe, Government, History, Justice, Politics, Revolution, Senior Contributors|

Far from creating peace, Edmund Burke contended, the French Revolution had generated the greatest despotism the world had yet seen, politicizing all things and enslaving the vast majority of the population. The Revolution itself was monstrous and had created only monstrous things. Of Edmund Burke’s (1729-1797) four Letters on a Regicide Peace—his final work, written [...]

Burke’s First Letter on a Regicide Peace

By |2020-10-15T09:55:34-05:00October 8th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Civilization, Edmund Burke, Government, History, Politics, Revolution, Senior Contributors|

As Edmund Burke observed, real community begins with the free and natural choice to associate at the most personal, familial, and local level, with each community growing from the ground up. By misunderstanding this, the French Revolutionaries seceded not just from Christendom, but from the laws of nature. In the final years of his life, [...]

The Coming Pandemonium

By |2020-10-03T20:37:36-05:00October 3rd, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Christianity, Modernity, Politics, Revolution|

We have been conservatives for too long. We’ve been content merely to mitigate the effects of the demonic forces unleashed by revolutionary movements like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Now, we must become reactionaries. Only by a mass reversion of the West to the apostolic faith can we end this permanent revolution and throw off [...]

Bonapartism and the Populist Empire

By |2020-10-01T15:42:25-05:00October 1st, 2020|Categories: Economics, Europe, History, Populism, Revolution|

Under Louis Napoleon III, the Second French Empire was more successful than the first, and more successful than any political administration in France up to that point. An Empire focused on domestic order and growth had finally brought the liberty and prosperity that Republics and Monarchies had failed to achieve. How could such a successful [...]

Robert Nisbet’s Ten Conditions of Revolution

By |2021-01-22T14:12:04-06:00September 17th, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Revolution, Robert Nisbet, Senior Contributors|

Given the present moment in this era of confusion in American history, one wonders whether the events of the last year count as revolutionary. Robert Nisbet’s ten conditions of real revolution may provide an answer. One of the twentieth century’s most astute observers of society, sociologist, historian, and man of letters, Professor Robert Nisbet (1913-1996), [...]

Edmund Burke and the Last Polish King

By |2020-08-31T15:28:56-05:00July 23rd, 2020|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Civilization, Culture, Edmund Burke, History, Poland, Revolution, Senior Contributors|

Poland’s reforms and constitution, Edmund Burke thought, offered real meaning, much closer to the experience of the American Revolution than that of the French Revolution. In significant ways, the Polish king succeeded because he embraced the laws of nature and “the array of Justice” without forcing anything of his own will upon his people. Stanislaw [...]

Secular Iconoclasm and the Peasants’ Indignation

By |2020-06-30T18:19:29-05:00June 30th, 2020|Categories: Civil Society, Conservatism, Politics, Revolution, Secularism|

Defacing public monuments, streets, churches, and administrative buildings constitutes an act of secular iconoclasm that should be taken seriously—not because the things destroyed possess the sanctity of real icons, but because the spirit in which these places and things are being destroyed conveys a hatred on the part of the rioters towards their own fellow [...]

Revolutions: Today vs. 1776

By |2022-07-01T19:38:33-05:00June 24th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Declaration of Independence, History, Modernity, Revolution, Senior Contributors|

The revolutionaries of 1776 could be just as violent as those of today, but they were truly a lot more intelligent and interesting. Eighteenth-century Americans fought with several generations worth of finely-honed arguments—from law, from experience, and from scripture, whereas the protestors of today, while armed with anger, seem armed with little else. In every [...]

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