?On 26 February John Kulig wrote: >What passes for conservative today in the US (very >ideological) bears little resemblance to what "conservative" >was to the founder of modern conservatism (Edmund Burke)…
I think John makes a good point here. Incidentally, although associated with his articulation of fundamental principles of Conservativism, Burke was a Whig (which transmuted into the Liberal Party some time later) not a Tory. >… whose "conservatism" took the form of criticizing mob rule >after the French >Revolution (as well as its ideological thinking) >(no doubt >HE was intelligent and was simply going against the zeitgeist?) Burke supported the *American* revolutionaries' case against the British government, if not the revolution itself. His opposition to the French Revolution (vehemently in opposition to the welcome it was given by his leading Whig friend and colleague Charles Fox) was certainly not a case of "going against the zeitgeist", it was a position inherent to his Conservative political principles. Remarkably, in his *Reflections on the Revolution in France* written within a year of the outbreak of the Revolution, he predicted the rise of a strong man out of the army who would become "master" of the Republic, but didn't live to see it happen in the person of Napoleon. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London allenester...@compuserve.com http://www.esterson.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- Re: [tips] Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent John Kulig Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:58:05 -0800 Well .... it's an intriguing hypothesis, and though I usually have knee-jerk 'yes' responses to anything evolutionary, could it simply be that more intelligent people think more, therefore more likely to have thoughts out of the main-stream? Also, it's quite a stretch to associate conservative with religion over even a short time and space. Religion & liberalism are often tied together - in Australia, for instance, where the % of religious people is very low, but those who are religious are into social justice. Know a visitor from Australia who was puzzled by the religion-conservative link in the US. Perhaps being "religious" there is a "novel idea". There is so much diversity under the terms "conservative" and "religious" as to make the claims superficial. Just a few examples: What passes for conservative today in the US (very ideological) bears little resemblance to what "conservative" was to the founder of modern conservatism (Edmund Burke) whose "conservatism" took the form of criticizing mob rule after the French Revolution (as well as its ideological thinking) (no doubt HE was intelligent and was simply going against the zeitgeist?). The same can be said of religion, to lump the tremendous variety, from orthodox liturgical practices to the highly individualistic practices of some christian churches, not to mention the interesting practice of lumping wild sex into religious practices (Rasputin tied his spiritual/ Russian Orthodox beliefs to some great parties I hear). Religiously conservative black churches in the US are sometimes hot beds of social liberal activism. And Catholic 'liberation theology' is radically left and socialistic. What is the common thread between all these things? Having a solid operational definition of these terms would help (there are some, not sure they are universally accepted). I suspect it is easier operationalizing spirituality that religiosity and atheism. No doubt we can empirically get "average" data for these terms, but statisticians sometimes remind us that averages can be applied inappropriately, as when we correctly say that the average American has one testicle and one ovary :-) ========================== John W. Kulig Professor of Psychology Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=923 or send a blank email to leave-923-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
