Edmund Burke: No Virtue without Struggle

[TomSea]

Edmund Burke: No Virtue without Struggle

by Bradley J. Birzer

screen-shot-2016-10-05-at-9-33-55-pmAs Edmund Burke continued his ferociously intellectual and spiritual attack on the French Revolutionaries in the earliest and least violent days of the Revolution, he noted critically that no one could ever attain or realize the virtues without struggle.

By invoking the virtues, here, Burke did not mean the kind of easy “I did good” or “I meant well” slop of rhetoric so present in the mouths of many so-called republicans of his day. Instead, the struggle for virtue must be tangible, real, and, even at times, bloody. As he had argued in the case of natural rights, the virtues were certainly rooted in nature and in God’s design and creation, but man could not simply declare them to be this or to be that. The virtues existed independently of man’s desires, though man could discover and embrace them to the fullest extent (and limit) of his abilities. History and the mysterious processes of free will, instinct, and folly have allowed the darkened mind and soul of man to see beyond himself and toward the virtues. And, as Burke claimed, following the western tradition, these were seven traditional virtues. The first four were found in the Symposium: prudence; justice, temperance; and fortitude. St. Paul the final three: faith; hope; and charity. Sadly, each of these words, as of the early twenty-first century, have become so adulterated and stunted that it’s worth remembering the classical definitions, the ones Burke understood.

Prudence: the ability to choose the good from the ill.

Justice: giving each person his due.

Temperance: the use of the created goods for the pursuit of good.

Fortitude: the pursuit of justice and the good, no matter the cost.

Read More At: http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/10/edmund-burke-no-virtue-without-struggle-bradley-birzer.html

[EasyAce]

From Burke:

There is no qualification for government, but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found,
they have, in whatever state, condition, profession or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honour. Woe to the country
which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace
and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state. Woe to that country
too, that passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid mercenary occupation,
as a preferable title to command. Everything ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot;
no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive
objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to
the other. I do not hesitate to say, that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor
a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple
of honour ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered too, that virtue is never tried but
by some difficulty, and some struggle.

This election is much struggle on behalf of no virtue.

We're about to send to the White House either one of a pair of candidates who wouldn't know the meaning of a word as big
as "virtue."

My vote was going to be "none of these candidates" going in. And after over three months of a relentless barrage of calls, robocalls,
and all kind of calls blowing up my telephone, one of the distinct displeasures of living in an actual or alleged swing state, the iron
remains in my spine to cast that "none of these candidates" vote. With a prayer that, in four years, this country---what's left of it
---will figure out what corrosion was wreaked when it chose nothing better than a vulgar crank and a vulgar crook to square off
for the White House.

[Cripplecreek]

@EasyAce

Trumpers didn't have a lot of love for Burke around convention time. He understood the reason we have delegates and representative governance. Many delegates to the continental congress referred to Burke when they went against the will of their constituents and voted for independence from Great Britain.

His constituents burned my ancestor Lyman Hall's house to the ground for it but eventually came around to thinking he was correct.

[EasyAce]

@EasyAce

Trumpers didn't have a lot of love for Burke around convention time. He understood the reason we have delegates and representative governance. Many delegates to the continental congress referred to Burke when they went against the will of their constituents and voted for independence from Great Britain.

His constituents burned my ancestor Lyman Hall's house to the ground for it but eventually came around to thinking he was correct.

Shame there isn't a "like" button for posts here . . .