Edmund Burke Speaks to FedGov

Don · Mar 28, 2009

Blame this one on rob and Haskins. They're the ones that reminded me that Edmund Burke had something to say to FedGov. Actually, he first said it in Parliment, on 19 April 1774, but it seems particularly germane today.

Sir, let the gentlemen on the other side...tell me, what one character of liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of slavery they are free from, if they are bound in their property and industry by all the restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at the same time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose to impose, without the least share in granting them. When they bear the burthens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to bear the burthens of unlimited revenue too? The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery; that it is legal slavery, will be no compensation either to his feelings or to his understandings.[

Yet the taxes and regulations that the colonists faced were a small fraction of what we face today. Since most of us worked until July 16th for the government last year, over half the year, and your newborn children arrive in the world with a debt of over $36,000 dollars owed thanks to the 545 who rule, at what point is enough, enough?

whistlelock · Mar 28, 2009

When we stop valuing life and people in terms of money.

Honestly. Instead of defining people in terms of how much they owe, let's try defining them by what they make or how they live.

Hitchcock was right- money is excrement, and it should be treated as such.

Romantic Heretic · Mar 28, 2009

And yet Burke opposed seating American Members of Parliament because he knew they would be seating slave owners. He also fought against the Americans opposition to the Quebec Act who didn't like that it granted civil rights to the French of Quebec, including allowing them to remain Catholics.

This isn't the 18th Century. It's the 21st. An 18th Century political structure can only support an 18th Century social structure. Just as houses are a lot more expensive now so is society.

If you want to live in a log cabin, go ahead. I want a modern house and I'm willing to pay for it.

robeiae · Mar 28, 2009

All in all, a good man, it would appear. Of course, he didn't live in a log cabin. Far from it:

http://apps.buckscc.gov.uk/modes/projects/SWOPimage/RHW35274.jpg

Personally, I prefer Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield...

The herd of mankind can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated and unimproved as they are.

Edmund Burke Speaks to FedGov

Don

All Living is Local

whistlelock

Whiskey Rebel

Romantic Heretic

uncoerced

robeiae

Touch and go