Edmund Burke is considered a founder of political conservatism. John Howard speaks of him fondly. But to read…

Edmund Burke is considered a founder of political conservatism. John Howard speaks of him fondly. But to read Burke is to see how much modern conservatism has misunderstood every word he said. A short 🧵on how his ideas could save us, including from Covid. /1 https://t.co/sACYtqNbKv

Burke’s work is too vast to capture in a thread. But the essence of much of it, and why he’s seen as the founder of conservatism, is his belief that the most important thing in society is custom and tradition. And his reasoning isn’t on first principles, he thought those…/2 https://t.co/M86q6c6rSV

…were the essential things because they were the empirical testing of ideas, in actual life. Customs and traditions are the ideas and practices that survive all debate, because somehow they worked. That’s not to say all customs and traditions are noble, not at all. /3 https://t.co/cNJ57wAl7b

Burke’s pragmatism simply recognised that customs and traditions are the glue that hold societies together. You ignore them at your peril. Right now for example the customs and traditions surrounding the management of a pandemic are being almost completely ignored. /4 https://t.co/JnF7mWgvot

To Burke that would be a recipe for social destruction, an unmitigated evil. The fact political conservatives are doing this he would have found unfathomable. And the way they’ve done it, by calling government action oppression, would have disgusted him. His words: /5 https://t.co/QGiwedMiRi

“But let it be once understood, that your Government may be one thing, and their (the public) Privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone; the cohesion is loosened; and every thing hastens to decay and dissolution.” /6

Modern conservatism is a con. It doesn’t conserve anything. It’s a radical assault on all custom and tradition. It’s the parties of ‘the Left’ who conserve now, who respect and try to maintain institutions. Look at Trump’s assault on the Capitol. Burke saw that danger,…/7

…centuries ago. The dangers of populism, read the quotes below and think how exactly they describe our world right now. And yet it’s politicians who call themselves conservative who are doing these things. Conservative politics has been hijacked by libertarian extremists. /8 https://t.co/I9CcWrtMZn

There’s nothing in libertarian conservatism that Burke would have tolerated, he’d have been aghast. Don’t be misled into thinking what we’re seeing is ordinary politics. It really is a hijacking. The wilful destruction of customs and traditions - institutions. /ends