Edmund Burke – The Age Of Chivalry Is Gone

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – In reflecting on what was happening in France in the French Revolution — Burke was a cosmopolitan kind of guy, so he was an admirer of other countries and of other cultures.  He was an admirer of the French.  No one wanted to see what happened in France happen.  Burke was one of the few that had the intellectual as well as spiritual knowledge and intellect to be able to respond in a manner that would stand the test of time. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Let’s reach back into the past for a moment, shall we?  Folks, it’s powerful.  Just looking at the phone calls, or lack thereof, looking at the emails and other electronic communications, or lack thereof, of the ones I have, you can taste it, you can feel it.  All is not lost, ladies and gentlemen, not yet.  Edmund Burke, the originator of what we call conservatism today — there are a lot of recriminations about conservatives in today’s Pile of Prep that we could get into as well.  In reflecting on what was happening in France in the French Revolution — Burke was a cosmopolitan kind of guy, so he was an admirer of other countries and of other cultures.  He was an admirer of the French.  No one wanted to see what happened in France happen.  Burke was one of the few that had the intellectual as well as spiritual knowledge and intellect to be able to respond in a manner that would stand the test of time.  He wrote an essay about what he saw going on in France.  The essay ultimately turns into quite a prolific book.  Here’s just one part of the essay.  When I read this, I’m going to change the word “Europe” to “United States” so it will all make sense to you.

[reading]

The age of chivalry is gone. — That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of [the United States] is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold a generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, achieved defense of nations, the nurse of the manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. . . .

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland simulation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of her naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order. . . . On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom, as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their terrors, and by the concern, which each individual may find in them, from his own private speculations, or even spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. . . .

[end reading]

Mike:  That’s Edmund Burke watching the French Revolution.  I just replaced Europe with United States.  We haven’t gotten around to erecting the gallows just yet, but give them time.  The day is young.  Hey, federal employees are all back to work with backed furlough pay.  Life is good.  We can schedule some gallows for you, for all you nonconformists out there.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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