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Introduction
The decentralization of information distribution via channels like cable television and the internet is widely believed to have fragmented the media and entertainment landscape over the last several decades. In the United States, more sources of news and political analysis have led to public awareness of more diverse factions and views. Why is it then that passive observers and full-time activists alike still tend to coalesce around two broad sets of opinions - the “Right” and the “Left” - even for seemingly unrelated policy questions? If we momentarily ignore our pre-existing assumptions, is it truly self-evident that citizens who share an opinion on a certain economic issue are likely to also agree on social or national security issues?
There are countless schools of thought on this question. For example, some trace political affiliations to rational material interests, while others try to pin broad agreement across issues to common personality traits that influence individual judgement. As for the labels “Right” and “Left” themselves, their origin is found in the French Revolution. In 1789, defenders of monarchical privilege sat to the right of the President in the National Constituent Assembly, in the position of honor akin to the seat to the right of God the Father or to the right of a father at a dinner table. They became known as the Right faction. Those who sought to restrict monarchical privilege sat to the left and became known as the Left faction. What do these events have to do with today’s policy debates?
In The Great Debate, Yuval Levin seeks to provide the beginning of an answer. According to the author:
“The late eighteenth century was the scene of a great Anglo-American debate about the meaning of modern liberalism.”
Levin is of course referring to liberalism not in the sense of the modern day “Left”, but in the original sense of liberal governments that oversee mostly free societies. The debate over liberalism was especially heated during the American and French Revolutions that took place during this period. The Anglo-American debate over the French Revolution was one battle in this larger war, but it was the battle where the sides involved had the most parallels to today’s Right and Left, according to Levin. This is the point where we see the emergence of a party of justice and a party of order, or a party of progress pitted against a party of conservation. Levin chose Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke as the most illustrative representatives of these competing stances. The resulting book recounts the two men’s lives and the history of the dispute itself. The Great Debate then humbly, but thoroughly, draws out the premises of their arguments and reasoning to discern their actual ideas.
Burke and Paine Pre-Conflict
Edmund Burke was born in Ireland in 1729 to a mixed Catholic / Protestant family. In that time and place, this familial background made entrance to high society challenging. Thomas Paine was born in southern England in 1737 to a Quaker family of modest means. He had to end his formal education at age 13 to work as a corset-maker and was later traumatized by the loss of his wife and first child in childbirth. Both men eventually transcended the challenges of their backgrounds to reach the pinnacle of the intellectual life of their time.
Edmund Burke became a member of parliament (MP) in 1766 and established himself as a Whig politician dedicated to reform. Burke spent years in parliament supporting Catholic rights, criticizing the slave trade, and working to stamp out the abuse or corruption of imperial officials. In the 1770’s, he even tacitly supported the grievances of the rebelling American colonists, whose cause Thomas Paine would do even more to support.
Paine migrated to the colonies in 1774 at the age of 37. His fiery pamphlet Common Sense supported the American Revolution, was read by a large portion of American Patriots and almost instantly made Paine famous. Common Sense contributed so much to the intellectual / rhetorical underpinnings of the American struggle and to motivating the supporters of independence that many consider Thomas Paine to be a Founding Father of the United States. With lines like these written in a subsequent work for beleaguered revolutionary troops during the war, it’s easy to understand why:
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”
Burke and Paine in Conflict
When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, many contemporaries expected these two advocates of reform and liberty to both support it. Paine, who was a firm believer in Enlightenment liberalism, was enthusiastic about the opportunity to replace the Ancien Régime with one that would protect the French people’s natural rights to liberty and equality. Burke shocked Paine and many of his fellow Whigs when he came out as an early critic of the French Revolution. In 1790, Edmund Burke published his most famous work, Reflections on the Revolution in France. In the Reflections, he acknowledged some of the grievances of the revolutionaries, but criticized what he judged to be the recklessness and brutality of their means and the imprudence of their ends. One of the best parts about reading Levin’s book is sampling the force of language both Paine and Burke could call upon. Here is Burke’s reaction in the Reflections to the Parisian mob threatening Marie Antoinette amidst a riot:
“…little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists; and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”
The Reflections defined Burke’s philosophy for posterity, as he made sure to insert his own ideas alongside criticisms of the Revolution. He argued that reformers had to balance their desire to improve society against an imperative to preserve what already worked and what was already beautiful. Existing institutions in society reflected a body of collected, imperceptible knowledge gained from vast experience - to Burke, these existing institutions generally deserved deference and thoughtful improvement rather than to be uprooted completely and replaced. He believed that human beings were too imperfect and inadequately knowledgeable to rapidly innovate systems as complex as government and societies. Burke also analyzed human beings firstly as members of society and then as individuals, with obligations to society, history and the future being just as important as individual rights.
“It [referring to Society] is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
Thomas Paine reacted quickly with the publication of Rights of Man the following year, where he criticized Burke’s arguments and defended the French Revolution. Paine firmly believed in Enlightenment principles and used them as the starting point for his analysis rather than historical context. He emphasized the primacy of the individual and of individual rights to liberty and equality. In his view, society had progressed enough that human improvement / perfectibility and the attainment of these rights were plausible, and that any institutions that stood in the way of these goals must be done away with. New societal structures could be rationally designed and implemented in their place; Paine believed that society was only obligated to ensure the rights of the living, and that Burke was making empty excuses for the preservation of oppressive societies like that of the Ancien Régime.
The two would continue to argue back and forth for years, in public writings and in private correspondence. Levin uses most of the book to methodically explain the comprehensive political philosophies Burke and Paine would lay the foundations for in these various writings. These ideas are necessarily complex and dense, and The Great Debate isn’t reading for the faint of heart. We only hope that we’ve given a sufficient introduction to encourage the Citizen Scholar reader to give the book a read!
Levin breaks the arguments up into different answers the two writers had for questions about:
[Human] Nature and the place of history
Natural and political rights, including the contours of justice and order
Social and political relations, including the balance between choice and obligation in politics
The place of reason in political thought vs the role of prescription (deferring to precedent)
The appropriate means and ends of such thought, including revolution and reform
The status of the past and the meaning of the future in political life, including past and future generations
Final Reflections
According to Levin, these arguments put forth by Burke and Paine over two hundred years ago laid the foundations of two strains of liberalism, which in his view, any liberal or open society will inevitably have to contend with: progressive liberalism and conservative liberalism. These strains have gone through many iterations and evolved since the days of the French Revolution, but their current manifestations in societies like the United States are marked with the heritage of the original debate.
We recognize that when considering such foundational political questions, there are a myriad of analyses and thinkers to choose from. The Citizen Scholar team was impressed by Levin’s thoughtful explanation and wanted to share it with readers while we continue to form our mental models of the prologue to the political present. We’re strong believers in being armed with systematic ways of thinking about complex ideas, especially ones that are so closely linked to the pursuit of civic virtue. Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine were active political actors as well as thinkers. Before they could impact the course of political history in the future, their ideas influenced the statesmen and leaders who had to actually navigate the upheaval of the Age of Revolutions. We’re eager to learn from these past debates, as we agree with Levin that ideas have a heightened ability to move history in times of rapid change and upheaval.
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below! If there’s enough interest, we’ll open a discussion thread to have a civil discussion about these ideas.
All the best,
The Citizen Scholar Team
Discussion #6: The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, by Yuval Levin