Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political
thinker of the past three hundred years. A brilliant 18th-century
Irish philosopher and statesman, Burke was a fierce champion of
human rights and the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, and a
lifelong campaigner against arbitrary power. Revered by great
Americans including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson, Burke has been almost forgotten in recent years. But as
politician and political philosopher Jesse Norman argues in this
penetrating biography, we cannot understand modern politics without
him. As Norman reveals, Burke was often ahead of his time,
anticipating the abolition of slavery and arguing for free markets,
equality for Catholics in Ireland, and responsible government in
India, among many other things. He was not always popular in his
own lifetime, but his ideas about power, community, and civic
virtue have endured long past his death. Indeed, Burke engaged with
many of the same issues politicians face today, including the rise
of ideological extremism, the loss of social cohesion, the dangers
of the corporate state, and the effects of revolution on societies.
He offers us now a compelling critique of liberal individualism,
and a vision of society based not on a self-interested agreement
among individuals, but rather on an enduring covenant between
generations. Burke won admirers in the American colonies for
recognizing their fierce spirit of liberty and for speaking out
against British oppression, but his greatest triumph was seeing
through the utopian aura of the French Revolution. In repudiating
that revolution, Burke laid the basis for much of the robust
conservative ideology that remains with us to this day: one that is
adaptable and forward-thinking, but also mindful of the debt we owe
to past generations and our duty to preserve and uphold the
institutions we have inherited. He is the first conservative. A
rich, accessible, and provocative biography, Edmund Burke describes
Burke's life and achievements alongside his momentous legacy,
showing how Burke's analytical mind and deep capacity for empathy
made him such a vital thinker--both for his own age, and for ours.
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