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Entry: Who Are We? Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/who_are_we#26393 Post contents: "It explains conservatives’ pragmatism and unconcern for justice or higher principle. Many who call themselves conservative experience it as terribly important to link conservatism to some such ennobling conceit as natural law theory or the aspirations of the Western philosophers. Even some of Edmund Burke’s admirers labor to obscure his genius by portraying him less as a conservative than a second-rate natural law theorist. Of course, every statesman and writer, Burke included, finds occasion every now and then to appeal to fundamental principles. That does not mean that he is absolutely committed to them. The conservative appeals to principle as convenience dictates. It does not disturb him in the meantime that the few may dominate the weak, that the poor may starve while the rich prosper or that the citizenry may indulge in the most appalling license. Conservatives uphold legitimacy whatever the human cost." So I'm not a conservative. I'm glad to have found that out. I suggest you all read a chapter in a book by Richard Weaver in which he asked if the Late Romand and Byzantine Empires were really worth the savage forms of execution which were required to keep their people in line. Sometimes it is better to consign even a "legitimate" govt. to the dustbin than simply to execute all the people it would take in order to maintain that legitimacy. It is to the credit of French Legitimists that they did not undertake the bloody purges it would have taken to eradicate the Orleanist, Bonapartist, and republican partisans. Sent at: 2008 12 02