Edmund Burke - Founding Father of Conservatism 

you are extraordinary in intellect & wisdom. its a winning combo from my POV. talk about 'enlightenment' yes. Rousseau could have been a smidge more pragmatic

I couldn’t agree more. The ‘cancelling’ of great people - such as David Starkey - may be painful for them at first, but what a blessing for the wider world where most of us live. There could be nothing more enriching than having ‘Starkey Direct’ rather than via the hideous legacy media and their stormtroopers, or having to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to hear him speak. Respects from the English Chaplaincy Istanbul - which is still very Burkean in nature and moos like a cow rather than screeching and scratching like a Woke grasshopper.

Very well said.

"I'd like to think of myself as..." is a pretty tepid statement.

@@shawn6669 alright negative nancy

@@samwelguy stating an opinion doesn't make it negative, and don't call me nancy, chuckles. Have a nice day.

The one thing "the english" NEED to accept and understand is the CORRECT DEFINITION for "left-/right-wing", which came from the French Revolution ... but basically everyone in the english-speaking world attaches "stuff that doesnt belong" to those sides, which is the reason why these terms HAVE NO FIXED MEANING for "you guys". Just look up the "left-right political spectrum" page in Wikipedia and LOOK AT THE CHANGE HISTORY! The correct (=continental european!!!!) definition is important, because this makes it EASY to understand the difference between communism and fascism ... because the former is left-wing extremist marxism and the latter is right-wing extremist marxism ... which you can easily SEE when you look at the seating arrangement in the german parliament of 1933. So anyone claiming "Nazis are left-wing" is DEAD WRONG (and uneducated) ... which is FRUSTRATING to argue against. You got those definitions wrong 240 years ago ... and are too arrogant to admit this mistake ... Conservatism is RELATED to right-wing, but it isnt the same.

@@shawn6669 Don't get your knickers in a twist Nancy

Great to see you still engaged Rev West.

Hello Johnny West. Are there any books you might suggest to read up on? I know little about social contract for starters. Thank you.

Yes, please do add more about the French Rev.

Burke was Anglo-Irish, not Irish. He was not a Catholic, he could not speak the Irish language and lived virtually his entire life in Protestant Ireland away from the Irish Peasantry. He is and always was Anglo-Irish. Which today we would call British.

Burkes mother was Mary Nagle , a catholic girl from Cork , his father of course was Richard Burke , a member of the Ascendancy who's Norman ancestors married into the old Gaelic families . Burkes cousin was Catholic educator and candidate for Catholic sainthood Nano Nagle , and Burke himself was a proponent of Catholic emancipation . In other words, yes he was indeed an Irishman , as much or more then most of the plastic paddy's prowling pubs on St Patrick's day in this era ...

Burke was Anglo-Irish, actually.

@@johnduder7583 It still wouldn't be correct to call him just "Irish", he was Anglo-Irish. Burke was an Anglican, and would furiously defend the Anglican Church. Also as you mentioned earlier he had Anglo-Norman ancestors, from a Knight who participated in the invasion of Ireland during the reign of Henry II.

Bingo! Especially in America. What's a shame is the fact of how misrepresented American political history is - - especially because it is written in ahistorical and lens of a cultural war victor and an attempt to paint the actual political history in America, which is far more "Conservative" and inherits the tradition of Burke. The Modern American "Conservative" is essentially the equivalent to that of a Jacobin or a Jeffersonian Liberal, and it has been that way for a while. When one takes the real view of Burke, whose writings were not really a sensible cohesive attempt at creating an ideology, but rather the inheritance of the way of Western Civilization since the rise of the Catholic Church to predominance in the 4th Century that he is simply transcribing to a correspondence with a certain lucky Frenchman who cared to see what he thought. What Burke says, at least from what I've read of his work is fairly "liberal" in the sense that it agrees with some of the pretexts of Liberalism, i.e. Locke's proposal of Natural Rights (not Tabula Rasa) but furthering it through his belief in the inheritance of rights which not only corresponds to natural rights but is ordained by God to be inherited by all men and is given a more practical and real meaning than just the term natural. It is easier to confuse what is nature, especially nowadays, but it is not easy to confuse your inheritance and what you are to deserve. The American Conservative used to be quite Burkean. Hamilton, the first American Conservative, admired Burke deeply and attempted to pursue his own path and modelled himself and the ideology he wished to build under Burke's philosophy. I could go on more but I don't want to use my brainpower right now at 2:50 AM tbh.

Why is it our duty to correct the behavior of other peoples who although may have a rather primitive and uncivilized way of behavior? In your country is one thing, but Internationally is another.

The point was more about how the units of measurement relate to the human scale and life.

It's not French it is English, invented by John Wilkins in the mid 1600's I forget the exact date , but Dr Starkey is wrong in thinking it does not work. The unit of measure for architectural drawings are millimetres, why? It dispenses with decimal places and thus is less prone to misreading and reduces waste (there are many other reasons of course). Also and this might shock the purists, the modern inch is based on the metric system and has been since 1950.

@@ShinobiYaka I knew it was invented by an Englishman, but can you elaborate on the metric inch?

I chuckle at David's much-used quip that 'all bad ideas are French', but as a scientist, the metric System Internationale is a god-send. And in Australia in the mid 1960s, we had the good sense to adopt it.

I attribute what you're saying to a disease which has infected conservatism in the US and the UK called libertarianism. I prefer a Bismarck style of conservatism based on pragmatism. He was the man who introduced the modern welfare state. Many today think of it as left-wing, but in fact it was first introduced by a conservative.

Because most of us have only ten fingers and ten toes!