Lucid and learned, clear and easy delivery, great way with words. A problem, though: Levin's sympathies get in the way of bringing both sides in 'The Great Debate' alive. Levin's Burke is a towering figure of wisdom, realism, and a truly democratic spirit; Levin's Paine is a crank and a madman who wants to inflict abstract utopian fantasies, utterly divorced from real life, on society. In other words, this is more or less 'Burke vs. Paine, as told by Burke.' (Listen especially to 16:45-17:30.) Levin conveys Burke's thinking beautifully, but his account of Paine doesn't do justice to the author of "Common Sense" and makes Paine's influence puzzling. A pugilistic analogy: Burke vs. Paine was something like Ali vs. Frazier, a clash of titans, but in this lecture it comes off as Ali vs. Chuck Wepner. We might have been better served by an actual debate, with Levin presenting Burke's ideas and someone else presenting Paine's. Still, this is a really worthwhile, stimulating lecture.

@TheSymphonyOfScience

4 жыл бұрын

He is a conservative...so he agrees with Burke's understanding. He never hid it

"A man who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he clears the way for others, and may chance to make even his errors subservient to the cause of truth."- Burke

@jeffdurant4771

2 жыл бұрын

@@andrew-zu3qg When someone makes a mistake other people can learn from it.

What some of us who have studied the writings of our keenest thinkers -- past and present -- conclude is that few who are self-described "conservatives" or "liberals" or "progressives" have thought very objectively about the principles consistent with these views. Thomas Paine was an exception. His writings are at the same time conservative and progressive, yet his principles are consistent. His writings echoed by best insights coming from Locke, Cantillon, Quesnay and Turgot. Was Paine outraged at the failure of existing institutions? More accurately, Paine was outraged at the continued existence of socio-political arrangements and institutions grounded in hierarchical privilege. He called for the establishment of governance, which would be identified by law that secured individual liberty and equality of opportunity. Paine embraced Locke's distinction between "liberty" and "licence" as the distinction between justice under law and the protection of entrenched privilege. No work by Paine explained these distinctions than his essay "Agrarian Justice." In this essay he dealt with landed privilege by joining with Cantillon and Adam Smith in calling for the societal collection of the rent of land to pay for democratically-agreed upon goods and services. Edward J. Dodson Thomas Paine Friends

@SusanSt.James-33

8 жыл бұрын

I first heard of Paine from your comments elsewhere. That led me this far. I m grateful.

@nthperson

8 жыл бұрын

+Susan St. James My pleasure. I invite you to spend time at the website of Thomas Paine Friends (www.thomas-paine-friends.org). We are always glad to have new members.

@SusanSt.James-33

8 жыл бұрын

Lots of thanks. I hope to also learn about Cantillon.

@clovisra

2 жыл бұрын

@@nthperson @Edward Dodson I will do it. I want to learn more about Thomas Paine and what you said about 'rental of land'.

25:00 Burke quote - gonna come back To this for an essay I’m writing

Thank you for this

37:25 great response. An important note is that Liberalism (in the classical sense) largely was English culture. It was a phenomenon Locke put into words, not invented.

Is there something they're trying hide about the podium?

What a great camera angle lol

Great talk.

0420/24-"most people don't get into it because they have no motives or want to take something away from somebody" I wonder if he feels the same today?

Individuals has to learn how to break down law to have a better concept,LOVE THIS VID

It seems by his talk that Libertarians and Randians are using Left-wing methods to come to Right-wing conclusions.

@mmille10

10 жыл бұрын

Levin said that in the 19th century the Left developed a utopian vision, that through the principles of democracy and individual rights our social institutions would become so good that we would eventually transcend politics as a nation. Factions would come to an end, and everyone would get on the same page. In the late 19th century they could see that this was not working, and so they abandoned the principles of the means (democracy and individual rights), but kept the utopian ends. Now their means are what they call pragmatism. He said that libertarianism is what remains of what the Left abandoned. They kept the principles of democracy and individual rights. Levin said that they sound a lot like Paine in their arguments, but they sound a little like Burke as well. He said, "It's complicated." I think he's on to something. because libertarians tend to side with the Left on issues like gay marriage, legalizing drugs, prostitution, etc., things that the Right philosophically considers to be social vices that tradition says need to be kept under control. However, libertarians, like Burke, are very skeptical of the idea that the modern Left maintains, that a few rationalists can order society such that we reach social harmony. They are skeptical of the ability of social institutions to create that harmony, or that this dream of total harmony the modern Left has is even possible.

@c4call

9 жыл бұрын

My ideology has been influenced by Rand, and I have a very libertarian (but more classically liberal) perspective, and being involved in many Libertarian circles, I will agree with you. They have the militancy of the Left-wing, and yet confusingly, the individualism of the Right-wing... it is slightly disconcerting to me. I am not quite sure why, yet.

@SquareNoggin

Жыл бұрын

Exactly. And this is a big part of the reason I went from being most sympathetic to a Mises/Rothbard type of libertarianism (anarcho capitalism) to being much more of a conservative. I think this happens to a lot of libertarians. Particularly if they convert to Christianity. As you grow older and wiser I think one tends to see just how fallen man is, and how in need of correction we are. Unfettered will is not a good thing; as often as not we make terrible decisions, even for our own sake. But I like the way you put it - libertarians use left wing ideas to come to right wing conclusions. Indeed. I think what the libertarians grasp very well and that overlaps with conservatives is the principle of subsdiarity as it relates to governance. What can be governed at the most local level possible ought to be governed at the most local level possible. Some things are the domain of the individual, others of the family, others the community, still others the state, or the church, etc. But without deferring to inherited traditions, and most importantly without submitting to God and His will - we will lead ourselves off a cliff. But one thing's for sure - those who find themselves in the position of great authority over many people must themselves submit to their Creator, and understand that their power comes with immense responsibility and duty. The liberals end up producing demagogue tyrants as readily as the monarchies did (if not more so) - but these godless secular tyrants answer to nobody; or at least nobody worthwhile. They answer either to the mob or to their own sense of "reason". At least the monarchs, much of the time, feared God and feared eternal damnation and as such would submit to the same eternal moral truths (found in their religion of Christianity) that even the lowliest peasants believed in. That's the only equality that can really work and really matters - that we're all created in His image and all knees will bow and all tongues shall repent before Him. When you have this worldview, power and nobility isn't so much a privilege as it is a duty. When your overarching preoccupation is the eternal status of your soul - being poor and "underprivileged" is far from the worst thing, and being rich and powerful is far from the best.

@mikexhotmail

11 ай бұрын

@@mmille10 Might makes right,at the end of the day?

@BobDingus-bh3pd

Ай бұрын

My etymology is simple. Liberty>Liberalism>Individualism>free enterprise>capitalism. Every decision I make is with the aim of adhering to that formula as closely as possible. Which sometimes requires deviating from the formula in order to prevent even greater deviation. The only difference between left and right is how far you’re willing to deviate from that formula in order to preserve it. And what tools you use in order to accomplish it.

A severe weakness of this lecture is its not grounded in the specifics of the debate between Burke and Paine.. Burke and Paine wernt debating weather tradition was good or not but wheather monarchy was. Burke defends monarchy because of tradition. Burke defends the status quo of feudal orders. An observation that comes up several times in the reflection is that Burke is disgusted that the commons, the third estate, is taking charge of the county and profaning the sacred order. The byzantine strucutres Levin is obliqley referring to and whick Burke defended is the overlaying secular, ecclesiastic, and jurist powers that criss crossed france in haphazard ways as a a result of how the kingdom incoroporated smaller polities. Burke and Paine are not just debating tradition v change but the legitimacy of the fuedal order and to generalize this debate to our current debates is a bit disenginious and honestly I think makes Burke look better than he does in context. Many are willing to defend tradition and things that work, I wonder how man of those people would side with Burke on the specifics of this debate. Also worth pointing out that this debate occured in the wake of the fall of the Bastille, several years before the monarchy was abolished in the August insurrection so this debate was occuring during an era which many call the 'good part' of the French revolution.

This is probably the most respectful straw Manning of Paine I have ever heard. Yet this little man failed to mention specifically Paine's abhorrence of the Crown or Monarchies and The Institutionalized Church and their powers and how these two European dominating institutions ruling over the everyday lives of the Common Man, a joint sovereignty he very much hated , influenced heavily the shaping of his radical political and religious liberalism, whereas Burke didn't feel all that keen on having them completely dismantled, and thus more or less defended as necessary for the common good for all. Oh Burke recognized problems in them, to be sure, but rightfully saw it impractical and impossible to deal with them by replacing these to leading institutions at the time with sane Republican Governments, as Paine proposed, like France tried to do, merely because they had been around for hundreds of years in Europe and thus too deep rooted to be plucked and tossed out overnight or gradually.

@hazelwray4184

11 ай бұрын

strawmanning/straw-manning

@opendoorchristianacademy289

7 ай бұрын

Only a little man would use the preparative "little man".

@opendoorchristianacademy289

7 ай бұрын

Pegorative

@outboardprsnlstndup

5 ай бұрын

Well, it’s good France was so successful

Good stuff indeed. The Great Debate is really between Washington/Hamilton--vs--Jefferson/Madison...who took opposite sides in the French Revolution. Dr./Prof. Michael P. Fedrerici brilliantly captures the essence of the debate in his book I review here. "Federici's connection between Burke's historic moral realism and Hamilton's is both excellent and central to the book. And this connection proves to have repeated ripple effects, or applications, in policy choices throughout the rest of the book. After years of reading history, political and economic books who trash Hamilton at every turn while gushing over Jefferson, this book was refreshing. Like Washington and Burke, Hamilton clearly sees the folly of unrooted political idealism, especially expressed in the romantic idealism of French Jacobins. Wonderful to see Jefferson Not get a complete pass on at least a few of his misguided a-historic notions, and naive love for the revolutionary & murderous French Jacobins. That he never, even in his old age, got around to recanting of his folly, is telling, no? Hamilton, Burke and Washington never fell for it. While Federici's hammering away at the above themes made the book outstanding, there were other themes he touched on briefly I would have loved him delving into further. One, is why Hamilton and Burke (and by implication Washington and other Federalists) are willing to trust political or governmental power to a virtuous aristocratic elite -- rather than trusting "the people" at large? What are the reasons, and are such reasons not at the root of preferring Republican government over Democracy? Another issue concerns ontological idealism vs realism: Why do Hamilton, Burke, Washington and the Federalists see humanity as fallen and unperfectable? Is it not clearly historic Christian anthropology? This could have been delved into under the novel notion (at least then it was) of separating Church and State, which Jefferson is credited as championing. But what are the implications today, which reach beyond Wilsonian idealism and the ever-presence of Cultural Marxism? One book, of course, cannot do everything and Prof. Federici had to draw the line somewhere with Hamilton specifically in mind. But such matters seem a natural thread by implication, especially when one considers the reverse of what Hamilton would have predicted happening in our day! The recent Populist-Traditional blowback against Secular-Globalism in the US and east/west Europe is real, but is doubtfully coming from where Hamilton would have expected. Though far from the unwashed blue-collar and fly-over deplorables Hillary cannot tolerate -- Nigel Farage and Donald Trump are hardly the polished and aristocratic elite full of Republican Virtue Hamilton likely had in mind to protect us from an entrenched and corrupt elite. Perhaps a new expanded version of Hamilton's Political Philosophy applied in our modern setting is in order, if not a separate book altogether. But this book is excellent on its own...and highly recommended." [Here's a good quote to entice you] "Jefferson agreed with Thomas Paine's "The Right of Man", a polemic written to refute Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" "As he was inclined to do, Jefferson attached universal significance to the French Revolution and seemed incapable of accepting...reasonable boundaries and limits to revolutionary violence. A few years after the French Revolution he reflected: "The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? ...but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, & left free, it would be better than as it now is." Revealing his progressive historicism, he wrote to John Adams near the end of their lives, decades after the French Revolution, that: "to recover the right of self-government ...rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over. Yet the object is worth rivers of blood, and yrs of desolation." p221, 220 The Political Philosophy of Alexander Hamilton. www.amazon.com/Political-Philosophy-Alexander-Hamilton-American/dp/1421405393/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3D6G15XGY38XS&dchild=1&keywords=the+political+philosophy+of+alexander+hamilton&qid=1602079007&sprefix=The+Political+Philosophy+of+Al%2Caps%2C177&sr=8-1

For once a conservative who seems to be able to speak rationally about ideologies. (although I felt I sensed a few minor strawmen in the end). I agree... The "left" in the US have forgotten Thomas Paine ... some of us haven't though. Although I might add, that I do not accept the claim that those inspired by Thomas Paine try to "escape responsibilities" - to the contrary - we are very aware of responsibilities, including to future generations. But of course - in that light it makes more sense why so many on the "right" seem to be perfectly fine with not leaving a livable planet for our descendants. Or at least - try to deny scientific fact to avoid dealing with the problem.

@jazzstandardman

4 жыл бұрын

How does it make sense? Can you elaborate?

it is simple and interesting those whom are conservative generally have most to conserve from it by their own social upbringing and birth rights.

@blablabubles

8 жыл бұрын

+John Archibald Yet the poor are often very conservative.

I do hope that at 48:00 you aren't seriously saying that a modern day Thomas Paine would be pro-abortion. That flies in the face of every aspect of his natural rights argument.

@TheSymphonyOfScience

4 жыл бұрын

I think he meant it. And I think he thought more about it than you did

This fellow just reads in a monotonous voice. He makes impression, that he does not believe his own words. Burke is like a turtle. When things get troublesome, he retreats to his shell.

Wrong. The dichotomy of left and right is equality and hierarchy. Progressive and conservative are talking about status quo versus incremental movement forward. Mental gymnastics and not actually understanding the meaning of words.

@keatsiannightingale2025

2 жыл бұрын

The irony here is that your simplistic post-hoc understanding is just that: Mental gymnastics.

@blindteo5808

2 жыл бұрын

@@keatsiannightingale2025 more right-wing cognitive dissonance

@rjwasser8312

Жыл бұрын

@@keatsiannightingale2025 Imagine the ego it took Mr. Teo to write a one sentence response to an hour-long lecture by a respected academic. It'd almost be impressive if it wasn't so banal.