Edmund Burke: The First Conservative
Edmund Burke’s writings, among which the best known and influential is Reflections on the Revolution in France, are foundational to conservative political philosophy. This work traces Burke’s ideas about politics and government as they emerged over his lengthy career in the latter half of the 1700s in the British House of Commons. Dividing his treatment into biographical and philosophical halves, Norman, presently a Conservative Party MP himself, anchors Burke’s outlook in his youthful experiences in Ireland, which instilled in him repugnance for injustice and abuse of power. Touching on Burke’s advocacy of reform in public issues of his day, Norman implicitly deploys Burke to challenge a caricature of conservatism as a reactionary ideology. Burke promoted repeal of restrictions on Catholics, reconciliation with the rebellious American colonies, free trade, and parliamentary supremacy in the British constitution. Depicting Burke as an advocate of gradual rather than radical social and political progress, Norman draws a clear contrast between the credence Burke gave tradition and its repudiation by Enlightenment rationalists. Still an important name in the contemporary political vocabulary, Burke is well defined by Norman. --Gilbert Taylor