human experience. the french did. the french revolution threw out the church, they threw out the king, they threw out the nobility, killed off most of them. they did a do-over, and the do-over didn't work. and unsurprisingly, and in fact predictably, burke said it wasn't going to work. thomas jefferson, you may know -- this observation may be close to blasphemy in my now home state -- thomas jefferson thought pretty highly of the french revolution. had some significant little dust-ups with folks here about it, and burke had serious,

serious combat over his position on the french revolution. so he wasn't a man who didn't understand change. he supported the american revolution. he was appalled by the french revolution. and he was appalled because when the french got done, there was nothing left of history, of tradition, and there was no experience to go on with where they found themselves. so with the help of reason and the human mind and knowing that man is good, they tried to create something new. the something new was the reign of terror decried by burke who watched it, and then when that was over, they fell into a kind

of, well, napoleon. and that's a whole other avenue. what's -- is napoleon like cromwell? napoleon certainly would not have been a burke favorite. you look at the french revolution and you look at the american revolution, you see the difference. the french tore it all down. in today's parlance, they threw the baby out with the bathwater. tore it all down, started over, without a great result. that is particularly an appropriate examination for today. let's look at a series of revolutions. the glorious revolution we've talked about. pretty easy, little bloodshed,

shuffled one king off to france in a reasonably happy frame of mind. picked the new one with the proper bloodline. turned out to be just fine. the glorious revolution? the french revolution. the american revolution? we've got a little comparison there between the three of those, but i want you to add three more: upheaval to your thoughts. the russian revolution pretty well tracks the french with even worse results. so add the russian revolution and how aburkeian that was. then there's two other ones i want you to think about.

put the civil war the war between the states. let's not defend any side. i want to you put that into the mix. i have thought about that only superficially because it popped up while i was preparing for this lecture. it was, in many ways, a failed revolution. and it has taken a long time for us to get over it, assuming the majority of us are over it. but no great challenge to the institutions of government. both south and north followed burkeian principles, tradition,

history, experience, and when it was all over, as unpleasant as that was and difficult as that was, the south was able to come back to the tradition and experience and history they understood even though they didn't like to. but it wasn't the institutions that got challenged in that war, and that's why burke would say that's why we got through it. but there's one other current revolution i want you to put into that mix. because i think it will help you understand where it's going to go, and that's multiple revolution. that's the arab spring. the arab spring thus far appears to be ignoring all of burke.

but they don't really have the traditi tradition, so it's not so hard to ignore what is our tradition and not theirs. huge part of burke's tradition and history is religion. and bear in mind, of course, burke's talking about not 40 years after the english have thrown out a catholic king because he was catholic and brought in a protestant king because he was a protestant. and when george i was selected, you better believe they made sure he was a protestant. so it isn't that there wasn't contention between religions in

burke's day, it is that burke is looking at religion. throwing religion into the arab spring gives you an opportunity for a whole different lecture. fascinating. seems they got to do their -- i started to say they got to do their revolution without religion. i'm not sure that -- i'm not at all sure being aburkeian that you can do that. i am quite sure you need to keep religion out of the front parlor of the executive mansion. and burke himself, though deeply religious and though mindful of how important religion is and was, was very much opposed to

making religion a part of government life. he was an early separation of church and stater. although clearly, he was talking about separation and not freedom from. and i'll get to that in just a moment. but fascinating, i think, those revolutions. there is a book "the anatomy of revolution" by crane britain. worth reading, compares russian-american english. as you read that as part of your indiscriminate leading, think about how aaron crane fits into the book. that's interesting because i think britain does not understand or acknowledge the role of religion in the american revolution and in, therefore,

our beginning. so burke has trouble with the french revolution because human nature is king, man is not inherently good. i think in a nutshell, i'm not here to talk about robesphere, i think the french thought man being inherently good, they could put something nice together. burke, by the way, says the king wasn't nearly as bad as we read in the history books. but burke did believe that liberty was god's gift. and we're going to get to that in a moment, too. so the english revolutions started in 1215 when the barons told king john, you have to stop taking stuff away from us,

you've taken our power away. this was a wealthy land of people, this was not joe six-pack. not even joe the plumber. starting in 1215, it was gradual. it was gradual all through this change. even through henry viii. parliament survived, waxing and waning, more powerful, less powerful, and that survival and that growth, i think, is why we are the way we are today. burke's opposition to the french revolution was a very contrarian notion. it was so contrarian -- although, you have to wonder,

what was george iii thinking? they're going across the channel and killing kings? you know the channel they're talking about, the fog rolls in and the rest of the continent is separated from britain because they can't see across the channel. maybe that's what george thought. but it was a very contrarian view, and in fact, burke broke with the leader of his party over his opposition of the french revolution. ultimately, the party came back to him and the king actually said, burke, i've read your book. i think you're right. so maybe we should add to history, tradition and experience a willingness to be persiste persistent, not necessarily resista resistant, but persistent. his reaction to the french revolution galvanized an already conservative inclination which had been developed because of the history that was so

proximate to his life and which was so clear to him followed on by di-- during his life, americ revolution supported the colonists, didn't support freedom for america. he supported the rights of englishmen who live in the colony differently. it's also consistent with his philosop philosophy. stability. all of the revolutions we have talked about that resulted in terrible bloodshed, upheaval, overthrow of existing ways of life were a result of not

being -- not slow development, not gradual development, but radical change. so one of the things burke liked, and this is perhaps surprising given the time in which he lived in which the nobility and land of gentry was very much a part of the life he lived. as a matter of fact, he said when he bought his estate and paid too much for it and had to go into debt that it's impossible to break into the land of gentry unless you pay more for your property than you can afford. because they want to watch and see how you do with that. he actually didn't do all that well with that. he died pretty much a pauper, but he didn't give up the property before he died, either. let's talk about something else

that burke was a believer in. this was before jack kemp, bill ross, ronld reald reagan. he was a supply starter. who, he said, is to judge what profit is appropriate? surely no one on earth. the question is, what's it worth to the buyer? i had -- i spent some time on several occasions in the former soviet union as they were overthrowing communism, pre yeltsin, in fact. i remember being asked by one of the russians, i want to ask something i don't understand about the united states. talk to me about potato chips.

okay. he said, how do you know where to send the potato chips? how do you know that? how do you know that joe's grocery store gets eight cases and mallory's grocery store gets 16? how do you know that? who tells you that? who is in charge of that? well, obviously the markets are in charge of that. burke got that. while he was in parliament, some bright spark decided they were going to put a tax on corn because there was too much of it or they wanted to make some money off of it or something. absolutely opposed to that. absolutely opposed to that. shortage of grain. grain price goes up. solution in parliament. let's build a bunch of graineries around the kingdom,

and then we can take the corn and put it in the graineries and we can let it out as people need it. burke said, are you crazy? when the government buys the corn, the government goes into business against itself. so it pays too much for the corn, now it's got to give the corn away, and the people have got to pay for the too much that they paid for the corn which doesn't do them any good because they get it cheaper later. to market lesson. by the way, the corn tax did not work and they didn't build the graineries. compulsory equalization. compulsory equalization. does this have any faint ringings today?

burke said, equalizers never raise what is low, they pull down what is high. never raise what is low, they pull down what is high. that's a debate that's going on right now. that's a debate that's going to get sharper and more important over the next few months, i believe. all markets are related. how about ethanol and corn? ethanol subsidy, farmers grow a lot of corn, choose to make ethanol, price of food goes up, price of feed goes up for the corn-eating critters we eat, so food has gone up. the only thing -- well, it went up, anyway, gasoline. but you can't -- you really can't mess around in a market,

says burke, unless you're willing to accept the consequences. and the consequences seldom, if ever, provide what it is that you thought you wanted when you started to mess with it. unless y-- and lest you wonder about labor, labor is a commodity. if there isn't enough labor and i need it, i'm willing to pay more. if there's too much labor, i'm going to be able to pay less. and you've heard this argument today on the minimum wage. i'm not suggesting that there may not be reasons that you want to accept the consequences, but if you impose a minimum wage and i'm an employer, i can avoid the consequences of that by not

hiring as many people. so burke was right about that. it is a commodity. think about labor unions, though. i've never been a very big supporter of labor unions, but it seems to me that the willingness to withhold labor, if it's a commodity, is a legitimate way to address the employer. except if the result of your withholding work gets you a wage that's too high for the product to be salable, then everybody is going to suffer from that. so, again, if you're going to

intervene, try to understand the consequences of your intervention and whether they are are good and whether your intervention is more than you need to do, or just about right. he also said two other things that are here in my notes. i'm not sure they fit at this juncture but they are too important to leave out. once you look to the government for bread, you will always expect it. that's sort of worth thinking about today. and this is worth thinking about even more. do not inflame the poor versus the rich. we are in it together. that's all got to do with markets. it's all got to do with our

history, our tradition, our experience, if we -- if we ignore or abandon those principles of burke, we do it at our risk and we need to carefully consider whether we're willing to accept the consequences of it. burke and the church. i mentioned before that in public education and civil policy burke thought that the church should not meddle, but he was clearly a very religious man in the sense of a belief in god and the importance of the history and tradition and experience of the church and what it meant in england. another question for today.

we have a growing secularism in the united states. can you teach without reference to faith? can you maintain society as we know it without religion? as part of history, tradition and experience, huge part of our history, tradition and experience, it's why people keep talking about the judeo christian ethic of the united states. there is no question about that in terms of our history, our tradition, and our experience. if you take it away, with what

do you replace it? i have no idea. i am not -- i do not go to church every sunday. i am not here preaching. but i began to worry about the rise of secularism in the united states really before i did -- before i did all of this burke reading i began to worry about it in terms of what part of our society does it play? how important? and i think the question comes down to the question i just asked. if you take religion out of the equation, what is the replacement? the only thing i can think of is

russo and the man -- and that man is basically good and inclined to do the right thing, with or without control, burke is rolling in his grave that somebody giving a lecture about him just said that. but that's the question. that's the question. not are they right from a religious point of view. say all right, okay, you're an atheist, okay. i'm not going to make you go to church every sunday. i may want to talk to you about why you feel that way but i'm not challenging your belief. i'm challenging you to tell me how you replace that in this society. political parties.

burke was a wig. burke was -- burke was not a wig wig, burke was a kind of a contrarian wig. so, even for burke, opposition was fine even if it was within your own party. being able to think your own thoughts, present your own ideas, was a good idea. and he saw political parties as a limit, a way to limit the monarch. he was a monarchist, a constitutional monarchists. the wigs were basically constitutional monarchists. the wigs certainly. and he got into a significant dust-up with the king over what

he saw as the georges. the three georges pushed back on this growth of the importance of parliament and the power of parliament. they were looking for a way to get things you know, back a little bit maybe a little more like charles i. control over what's going on. and they were doing that by making kings ministers of members of the torrey party in parliament. and burke saw that as a very bad idea indeed. and fought against it and successfully, easy to see why he did. having the king come back to being a tyrant if i can use that inflammatory word, clearly was not part of what burke saw as a

progressive or a progressive history, tradition and experience. let's just talk, let's take what time is left to say a little bit about payne. payne is, well, payne was -- let me back up and say well, who made what contribution to who we are as a people today, what our government is like, to the american revolution and the thoughts that created and sustained that revolution. payne's contribution and burke's contribution entirely different. i started when i was thinking about this to say burke's contribution was far bigger than payne's. and i guess from my perspective

as a politician that's true. but it's not really a fair comparison. payne's rhetoric was really actually kind of over the top. but payne's rhetoric encouraged the colonists to take the steps that they need to take, needed to take. and i think you can legitimately wonder whether burke's philosophy, reasoned, wordy, and he was very prolix, whether that would have gotten the colonists where they needed to be in terms of freedom from britain. burke was never for american freedom from britain. burke provided the serious philosophical underpinning of early american political

society, and for the conservative movement that is as appropriate and important today as it was in 1775 and 6. so, i think burke made a bigger contribution to the result. and i think payne made the contribution to lighting the fire. so, i'm willing to give payne his due. and by the way, jefferson, big payne guy. don't know that he read burke. haven't read that he read burke. he did all right without it. so i think i have filled my allotted time. we're going to take a break, right? and we'll come back and talk about revolutions and payne and