Rousseau and Burke and Baking the Social Cake

​From an article using Rousseau and Burke to evaluate social change: 

"The debate between idealism and prudence can be traced back to Edmund Burke’s criticism of the French Revolution and the philosopher Rousseau, who died shortly before the Revolution but whose writings inspired it. Even before the mass executions and the Reign of Terror began, Burke warned that the Revolution would take a dangerous turn, organized as it was by intellectual speculators with abstract theories of justice. Rousseau, in particular, exemplified the new type: a person with no sense of the real world and therefore no comprehension of limits; a self-righteous thinker of big ideas; a social engineer eager to experiment with people in the same way a scientist experiments with mice in an air pump. Burke feared that fanatical idealists in the tradition of Rousseau would eventually demand their social theories be implemented without exception, and that in their single-minded pursuit of purity they would start killing people.

The only antidote to such a monomaniacal tendency in politics was prudence, Burke argued. Political leaders must know theory, he said, but they must also know the local conditions before applying that theory, to get a sense of how far to push. This allows for a more judicious application of theory that lets everyone, both reformer and traditionalist, live together in order and peace.

Burke was not against all revolutions. He supported the American Revolution for the same reason he opposed the French Revolution. In the American case, it was the British who were guilty of fanatically applying theory—not the Rights of Man but the Rights of Sovereignty. In theory, the king had the right to tax the colonists, but given the latter’s obsession with freedom it was unwise to do so, Burke counseled. Again, Burke’s warning proved prescient.

Rousseau-like speculators can be found today on both the political Left and Right. Whenever I ask social justice warriors for a solution to an obscure country’s problems, they invariably reply, “social justice.” An example would be their insistence on bringing the #MeToo movement to every country around the globe. When I pose the same question to extreme libertarians, they invariably reply, “free markets.” Neither group knows anything about the country at issue, nor do they think they need to know anything. All they need to know, they think, is their pet theory, which they are eager to apply anywhere and always and to the limit, independent of local conditions. If the planet Mars were ever colonized, leftist ideologues would demand social justice for the Martians, while conservative ideologues would urge free markets on them."

This is from an article by Ronald W. Dworkin, an anesthesiologist who is also from the Hudson Institute, which leans right. It was on a website I found through a gay rights guy I like; he leans left. The website is the American Interest, which leans right. The question is, I suppose, is "prudence" political?The whole article is here: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/07/04/slow-and-steady/

Slow and Steady - The American Interest www.the-american-interest.com The Masterpiece Cakeshop case and the ascent of theory over prudence in American political life.

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