one of the biggest mistakes that the radicals of the french revolution make is that they believe if only they find the right rules they could just start everything over from scratch your burke says we'll never know enough to build a whole society directly. what we can do is see what works in the society we have and try to make the rest more like that. essentially the process of social progress is the process

of making society more like its best self. it's a gradual process, a grateful process that tries to be impressed by what's working rather than outrage at what isn't. a kind of conservative process that tries to say the best we can serve as a model for the rest. >> host: one of the things i didn't remember or know, i have not read burke until late, and the phrase little platoon which is bandied around a lot particularly in computer circles as shorthand for the institutions of civil society, meeting -- mediating structure that can between the individual and the state. robert putnam at harvard has done a lot of stuff on this. bowling leagues, churches, schools, all of these things are a little platoons but you point out that for burke when he coined the phrase, talking about social class. >> guest: that's right. in a way it's a tolerable mistake because burke is devoted

to civil society, to all those institutions that stand between the individual and the state. he thinks they are essential and a big part of the debate, paine makes an argument the institution building individual and the state are basically illegitimate power sources, power centers in society. nobody chose to give them authority and the exercise enormous authority. a wilderness of dates between individual and his right. are those defenders but the term little platoon comes any passage in reflections of evolution were burke is criticizing the wealthy french returned against the wealthy, who joined up with the radicals and decided to dismantle their society. he says you have to begin by thinking about what it is you have to offer your society from where you sit. you have to first understand what the part of society that you are part of has to offer that's good rather than turn it

in -- turned against society as whole. he makes a case for economic class, social class, it is argued a little platoon that we are a part of is as much a part of the economy that we are part of as a part of the society we are a part of the a lot of people use that phrase means something very different. >> host: it was funny in that discussion and we will get back to this in a second, but one of the things that came to my mind was popular show, down in abbey. i would love to read the british left take on the show because you have butler's and maids and house servants who are as fierce defenders of their station, their class of not wanting to see classes lower than them treated as equals with him and the idea of a servant sitting with the upper crust horrifies the serving class as much as it

horrifies the aristocrats. it got me thinking though, this is something i want to come back to his will, so much of what burke is writing about these things only makes sense to a certain extent in the context of british culture. i really think british exceptionalism he's talking about, and it's one of the reason why i don't think it translates as well to american society as you discuss, but any sort of talk about the role that, you know, could his arguments have worked in europe the way they do in britain because in britain there's a culture where people actually -- in the way that maybe there's lack of feudalism or whatnot that maybe those arguments don't play nearly as well. >> guest: i think that's true in part entry in relation to his

descriptions of social class and of the people's relation to their stations. in a way britain and his son was much more free and equal to continental europe and much less so than america. as he acknowledged in both cases. burke's argument is not -- berg was an early opponent of slavery. it was easier to be one in britain and in america because basically it had already stopped. but he was. he was one of the first signatories of the wilberforce petition and so on. burke recognizes that different societies exist in different circumstances. certainly part of his argument is about the particular genius of what he calls the english constitution which is not a rittenhouse tisha b'av a whole system that included an important class of folks effect it had its merits. he was not a defender of the

status quo per se. is not an opponent of all change to the classic symbol. he was -- people coul good rusht system. he had done it himself but he came from a middle-class family not just a middle-class family by an irishman class family and made it really to the upper tiers of the british legal system. and wanted to wait to be opened other people to do the same, but he did believe there was a stabilizing influence of the aristocracy that made the british opened his way of thinking about free society in ways that were essential. he thought the french could have saved the system by looking to their own history, by looking at the best of their own tradition rather than assuming there was only bad in it. interested the americans were quite a different species of englishmen. that while they have the same rights of englishmenglishm en and, in fact, does part of what they were fighting for in the american, in america equality reached far more deeply, the

class system didn't exist in the same way. but it think what work offers is a disposition and an idea of what the free society is a translates pretty well to america, much less so than continental europe. the european path to democracy is very different and the european idea of democracy, social democracy is quite different and i don't think burke is all that applicable to continental europe are people who tried to climb in ways i think were very perverse and that led to a certain kind of, people like hegel thought they were following burke in some respects. burke would not a fossil in any respect. i think it translates to america much -- >> host: they told me there would be no hegel. >> guest: there is always hegel. i think it translates to america much more easily because in a funny way one of the things that we americans are the left and the right take for granted, some of the thinking about it too much is that the american revolution was the beginning of

something brand-new. the american revolution was the stench and of a certain kind of anglo-american english way of life in thinking. it's quite different and it developed differently for a very long time in american life. burke in his speeches on american notes a couple of differences. the americans are much more alert to threats to their liberty, much more suspicious of government than the british were. but the basic idea of the relation to the individual, to the committee, it's rights is an english idea. the disposition toward society that burke articulates is useful to america. it's not simply translatable but i think it plays a part in what we think of as conservatism house of representatives so one last bit from an actual book. as i understand, and correct me if i'm wrong your dissertation was slightly different title and it was on -- i'm not trying to

imply your somalis are recycling. i think you're sure this book. >> guest: my fourth. postmarks slacker. the title of the dissertation was the death of the past or what was the title transfer it was called the great law of change edmund burke, thomas paine and the meaning of the past and democratic life. >> host: you touched on them a little bit, but can you talk lived about that? >> guest: that's what the book ends. the book goes through a series of dramatic interpretations of the differences and inns on the question of the meaning of the past because a lot of differences, disagreements about other subjects amount to disagreement about what the past shipping to the present. at the end of the day burke believes that human beings exist in the context, that we're all born into world that existed

before us and that this is an inescapable fact. we don't have a choice about it and so to understand society is fundamentally the choice is a te kind of mistake. society institute unchosen obligations and should be set up in a way that allows us to meet unchosen obligations. to the family, the community, the nation, the people around us. he that we could not escape the past and we shouldn't want to because the past is the only reason why we don't live in savagery. the inheritance we get, the cultural and social and intellectual inheritance is the reason why we can make progress. burke is a certain kind of conservatives. conservatives. is a traditionalist but a forward-looking traditionalist. he believes the present is better than the past, not worse. a lot of traditionalists think the past with some perfect state in one way or another, or in the past we had access to some perfect truth, we don't anymore. we can only reach it by living fully our fathers did. burke thinks things have improved over time and that the future can be better still but

only if we sustain the means by which the present has become better than this. it's a way forward. paine a game because he believes fundamentally in the human being as a chooser, a rational chooser, and because he believes we should understand society as a choice and as existing to protect our freedom of choice believes that the weight of the past on us should be as light as possible. every generation should be as free as they can be and history as the first generation was to determine its own destiny, to set its own goals, to make its own laws, create its own civilization. and that difference between them turns out to be an enormously important difference. it's crucial to burke's criticism of a certain kind of liberal radicalism, and it's crucial to burke's description of his own liberalism's, his conservatism liberalism which is a gradual building on the past.

is essential to paine radicalism. he wants to enable people to be free of unchosen obligation. so especially to be free of the obligations that present themselves at the juncture of generation. he wants us to live as though it were not the case, that we were born into a world that existed before. so the place of the past is essential to the difference between a. i think it's crucial to the difference between right and left still. you see it especially and a lot of what we think as social issues. a lot of them really amount to whether the obligations we have are, in fact, obligations, or whether we should work to make it so we can choose them. so everything is optional and we don't owe anybody anything that we don't want to. conservatives and social debates often just say this is the world we are given, this is the human being as a human being is and we have to live with that, rather than find ways to initiate some

radical break with them. >> host: what to paine think of the family? >> guest: paine is, paine is a little coy about it. he didn't believe in inherited anything. he was opposed to inherent predators, inherited power, to inherited property. paine at the end of his career writes an essay that lays out a sort of a sick outline of a welfare state. he shows us how radical individualism leads to statism. and it's a very important thing to see. the entire thing is funded by an inheritance tax because he says nothing of use happens in that juncture, in that intersection between generations. he basically just have somebody getting something they didn't burn so that's the place where society can legitimately taxed people. he doesn't make a radical argument like marx does or like plato does actually that the

family should be broken up, parents and children should be separated because that's the way to enact a radical social change. a lot of what he says is just as much release suggests the links between generations should be listened if not broken. he doesn't go quite as for some people but as smart as radicals and revolutionaries have always understood that the family is the foremost obstacle to their goals. >> host: from plato's republic on track to a less pernicious ways the condition of the initial, the first thing they did was raise children in common, taken out of the house. it's silly to the relationship between parents and children is the foundation of social order and to change the social order fundamentally you have to break that relationship. >> host: hillary clinton once said, much like melissa harris perry from msnbc a couple months ago, we as a country need to move the on the idea of there is

-- we need to move the idea, move away from private ownership to collective ownership. the reason i brought it up is, it's very clear that burke understands that the family unit is essential, particularly 18th, 19th century. the family unit is addicted to ship. babies are not born with a lot of rights in the context of their own families. i was wondering does paine consider that to be unjust, a father or a mother tells their children when to go to bed, what to eat, what to wear? >> guest: john locke offers an answer to the people who follow this question which is to say that liberalism is suspended in the family until the age of maturity and the reason is that liberalism -- liberty requires reason. recent more or less as paine understands and human beings are born with an undeveloped rational faculty and their reach and maturity.

that's what maturity means. ozment as parents we can agree with that. >> guest: i know she reaches ever but i'm sure you don't have it when you're four years old. so effectively parents have the right to treat their children as almost their property up to a point. while the children are young. paine echoes that here and there not burke makes an explicit argument about this and it's in direct response to paine to paine in the rights of men, the book he wrote about the french revolution makes the argument that effectively that one generation shouldn't be able to find another. it's made in criticism of burke in the reflection of the revolution were booked -- were burke says we are bound to the monarchy forever. paine says no parliament can find future to anything ever. there shouldn't be anything that we do because of past generations since a. >> host: what you think of --

the u.s. constitution? >> guest: pain is very critical of what's in the u.s. constitution without ever explicitly criticizing the constitution. not only of the way in which it binds the future county is critical of checks and balances. is critical of a bicameral legislature. he thinks that democracy should be as direct as possible, as simple as possible. he doesn't think it's necessary to divide our and channel it in these ways. he thinks it's keeping people from the right. never says he would've opposed the constitution, but it seems like he is very critical of the constitution. and we know very little of what burke thought of the constitution but it was more in line with his way of thinking about government. it's one of the great frustrations of burke's scholarship. there's a letter in which a friend of his sent him a copy of the federalist and said his

friend, letters to this friend in ireland with a source of some the best thinking of burke. they had arguments. the one time he came to britain, he came to london, he said this book at and said let's talk about it when i see. now we don't know what burke thought about the federalist otherwise we probably would have. the way of thinking about government is more amenable to burke's way of thinking than paine. >> host: so this is one of these areas moving it up to contemporary issues, this is one of these areas where you can see the left and right divide. generally speaking, the left feels constrained by the u.s. constitution. wants a living constitution, you know, john podesta back in the white house now set a couple years ago because of republican obstruction in congress, said

the u.s. political system sucks. and that frustration with checks and balances and all that is very much the party, the party of government doesn't like it and curtailed it. but there are other areas where, i will ask it since you're the author here. why is there so little discussion how this stuff actually plays out in contemporary life? in the income you are fairly uninterested in really going very far in trying to score these things in the contemporary clinical debate. >> guest: it's a book about burke and paine. i certainly thought about whether it should end with a kind of what would burke, what

would paine do chapter. in the end i decided that would take away from the discussion itself because if you let work and paine speak for themselves and their not shine quite clear about what they think, i think it helps both liberals and conservatives understand their own views better, understand te views of the other better, understand where they differ from people who i describe is maybe the origins of the own way of thinking and what they don't. i think it's more useful as a presentation of what seems to be one of the first institutions of the left-right divide in a recognizable way in an attempt to try to show how the line goes from here today. because the light doesn't go in a straight way. a lot has changed about the left and right. allow this change about our circumstances. i would say especially a long century and more long debate about economics that they were not part of. between socialism and capitali capitalism. they were something not part of the burke and paine debate but i

think that has changed things some but what burke and paine do is show you what the basic disposition, the basic difference of approaches, ma the basic difference is a definition between left and right. they're different understanding of what the liberal society is come from and what to look like in their original form. and what you point your help to get to that. one of the reasons why paine and the left chase under the constitution becomes very clear in leading paine more so than in reading today's progressive site because very little sense of their intellectual history and whether ideas come from. paine's metaphors about society are all motion metaphor. they're all about moving. progress and motion. berg's metaphors are all statesmen, all about grading a space in which society can thrive. that's what government does. that's what the purpose of politics is and without defining

what happened in that space he believes that by sustained the space you allow for progress because progress is not only made possible by what happens in the space but is defined by what happens in that space. the space is maintained by key principles, by sticking to some key propositions. but within that space politics is not about principle. all it takes is about prudence. it's about what we want, how to get it, what we can achieve. answer everyday politics is not a constant appeal to an egalitarian idea or any other ideal with an end towards changing everything about how we live so we could live in a very different way. it's about improving what we have the souls problems that arise. and so for that kind approach to government, something like u.s. constitution is a tremendous leap powerful and effectively at the instrument because it defines the space, allows you to sustained the space and allows for great it would discriminate and difference within change in

the space. but what you want is motion, the restraints are just bridled. if you like there always holding you back. things that much too slowly and she can't transform the whole thing at once and you never get the kind majority need to do what you want. for burke this would've been a feature. ever paine this is the biggest problem. >> host: it's funny, i noticed that there would be no hegel, but you are right. one of the reasons why i would argue the left has changed is this importation of -- not to beat a dead horse but a lot from the woodrow wilson, the first president who said a vision of what the country needs to go. prior to wilson the president wasn't just a night watchman by ted defined set of obligations to protect the country, but not guide the entire politics in a specific direction.

>> guest: burke would say the country needs a leader of where it is, not where it is going. >> host: one of the things, when you read, when i read burke's stuff about reason, which i enjoyed and i think there are points very well made by you and by burke, i know you like being in the same sense as burke, but there is a lot, i think i put it in the review, these guys are sort of, i understand i get the biology wrong but they are the founding fathers. of the left-right debate. but there been so many generations, the genetic material has gone all over the place to sow their family resumes as you can find on both the left and the right. when i read a berg talking about reason, i get a strong whiff of

critical legal studies of the sort of postmodern left that i got stuck with in college of boulter's bastard, rejecting this sort of thing. and wind i read paine i get a strong whiff of very strong whiff of libertarianism. it seems to me the most element of american politics today is more the tea party than it is the democratic party. >> guest: it depends on what you mean by paine but i think that's true in some ways and for a number of different kinds of reasons. i think there are a lot of libertarians who starred where paine starts come in some ways libertarianism contains multitudes, some forms of it are very turkey in, hayek's -- burkean, the essence of burke's view. but some forms of it are very rationalistic and ready believe

that society by applying certain kind of roles, especially economic principles that are more or less scientific as they understand them can maximize freedom and, therefore, maximize happiness. what paine shows us in the course of his own thinking and in the evolution of his own thinking is that how radical individualism leads to statism. how it leads, the desire to liberate the individual from reliance on other people which is i would say the essence of paine's goal, leads to the creation of a kind of faceless provider of material benefits. benefits. he gets to himself if he takes the steps and shows you why they are connected. there's a tendency among us american conservatives to think of the welfare state, and as you said before, aggressive isn't itself as a german import. in a lot of ways it is but our welfare state is not bismarck's

welfare state. it's very different. much more like paine's welfare state. the purpose of it is to enable the individual to have a kind of illusion of independence. to enable people to make their material needs without being dependent on people around them. where depends on people around you is, there's no real way around that. burke says society should basically be formed around that fact, that these unchosen obligations to people around them, especially the family should be the core of society. paints has in order to break that we have to actually have a distant, faceless provider of material benefits to the poor. and that is what the american welfare state more or less looks like. it's not come it doesn't really exist in the services of social democracy in practice although a lot of the arguments around it now on the left sounded that way. it exists in the service of a

very radical liberalism. i think the left in america is much more radically individualist and the right in america. where you find radical individualism on the right is in libertarianism, in the sense that society should take its bearings from individual preference, individual want above all. libertarians are in a kind of no man's land in the left-right divide. that's a fact that it didn't end up on the right because they think the greatest threat to liberty is government excess. i think that's true. so it makes sense for them to be on the right but they're not exactly conservatives as many of them would be the first to say. >> host: libertarianism is changing a lot but it used to be much more grounded. whenever people tell me their libertarians and conservatives have split off, not in your it was important which was economics. conservative economic thinkers are basically sharing the same baseball cards. >> guest: i think it's

increasing in libertarianism, a sense of society as this kind of unguided organic thing that should be allowed to grow and experiment the conservatives have different views about how, where the limits on that kind of extreme edition should be set by that basic view of society is not a rational plan thing but as a growing organism is if you many libertarians shower in common. >> host: i have long argued they are judged by the utopia, most consumers find one in the past. but for modern-day liberalism, it's the college campus now. instead of classless society commits his place college kids have the food, especially elite colleges, they have the food provided for them, or shelter, their security. and yet they think of the most independent people in the world. so very quickly because we are running out of time, the current

political climate, particularly on the right, the tone of this, scholarly, informed, credential, not dismissive but certain a skeptical. i don't think i'm spoiling it for anybody that you side with a berg in the end. is very much out of tempo with the time. both, particularly on the right. do you think that the american conservative movement can move back to a more burkean temperament? >> guest: yeah. yeah, forward to more urgent temperament. i think part of the of the book is to offer a different intellectual history of ourselves. intellectual history is there important to conservatives. we define ourselves that way, in a way the left just doesn't.

and i think too often when conservatives in america reach for intellectual history or for philosophy we reached the most radical version of the story of the american founders, a jeffersonian tale of what america is, and we then squeeze lincoln into the story and ourselves into that story and it aims other being too radical a story about ourselves. what burke offers is a different way to understand the liberal society including our liberal society. and achievement, not a break from the past but an achievement of western civilization. i think american greatest achievement of western civilization and was not achieved by throwing away what came before but by making the most of the best of it. and, therefore, as a society that improves and grows by gradual refinement of itself, becoming more like its best self. that is not a radical process and it's not a process that requir r