re: #242 A hollow voice says NOW drain that swamp!

Sorry, I don’t see what your question has to do with what I said.

(As to Edmund Burke, he had just been a witness to the French Revolution, with the “Republic of Virtue” and the Terror for dessert. Naturally that affected his thinking.)

Burke was a leading sceptic with respect to democracy. While admitting that theoretically in some cases it might be desirable, he insisted a democratic government in Britain in his day would not only be inept, but also oppressive. He opposed democracy for three basic reasons. First, government required a degree of intelligence and breadth of knowledge of the sort that occurred rarely among the common people. Second, he thought that if they had the vote, common people had dangerous and angry passions that could be aroused easily by demagogues, fearing that the authoritarian impulses that could be empowered by these passions would undermine cherished traditions and established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property. Third, Burke warned that democracy would create a tyranny over unpopular minorities, who needed the protection of the upper classes.

He was a complicated man, and wouldn’t fit neatly into contemporary politics in the USA.

That said, he was a supporter of the aristocracy (being a member himself), and stated that the reason France went through a revolution was not because aristocracy failed, but the aristocrats failed their aristocracy. (Same argument the GOP uses today about conservatism, it can’t fail, it can only be failed.)

He supported the idea of American Independence rather than punishing the USA for rebellion. His idea was that the colonies would be far more pliant and controllable through the very profitable bank interest rates the United Kingdom would still get than any sort of retribution for rebellion.

He opposed the slave trade and thought anyone who enslaved people should not be allowed to sit in Parliament.