Please join the David Starkey Members' Club via Patreon www.patreon.com/davidstarkeytalks or Subscribestar www.subscribestar.com/david-starkey-talks and submit questions for members Q & A videos. Also visit www.davidstarkey.com to make a donation and visit the channel store shop.davidstarkey.com. Thank you for watching.
you are extraordinary in intellect & wisdom. its a winning combo from my POV. talk about 'enlightenment' yes. Rousseau could have been a smidge more pragmatic
For us, selfish as it is to say, Starkey's 'cancellation' was good in that instead of going to the media and producers, he now comes directly to us. The gate keepers made themselves unemployed.
I couldn’t agree more. The ‘cancelling’ of great people - such as David Starkey - may be painful for them at first, but what a blessing for the wider world where most of us live. There could be nothing more enriching than having ‘Starkey Direct’ rather than via the hideous legacy media and their stormtroopers, or having to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to hear him speak. Respects from the English Chaplaincy Istanbul - which is still very Burkean in nature and moos like a cow rather than screeching and scratching like a Woke grasshopper.
I love your videos. Very pleased you made the move to independent content creation. I wish you all the best and hope that your vast knowledge inspires and educates many. x
Fascinating. I hadn't thought about Burke since 1963 when I was at school. Your views on his attitude to the monarchy are what I remember my history teacher telling us. He was, as I remember, a supporter of Cromwell.
Such a privilege and a pleasure to listen to David Starkey giving us the benefit of his way of thinking about history. I hope his channel continues to thrive.
The one thing "the english" NEED to accept and understand is the CORRECT DEFINITION for "left-/right-wing", which came from the French Revolution ... but basically everyone in the english-speaking world attaches "stuff that doesnt belong" to those sides, which is the reason why these terms HAVE NO FIXED MEANING for "you guys". Just look up the "left-right political spectrum" page in Wikipedia and LOOK AT THE CHANGE HISTORY! The correct (=continental european!!!!) definition is important, because this makes it EASY to understand the difference between communism and fascism ... because the former is left-wing extremist marxism and the latter is right-wing extremist marxism ... which you can easily SEE when you look at the seating arrangement in the german parliament of 1933. So anyone claiming "Nazis are left-wing" is DEAD WRONG (and uneducated) ... which is FRUSTRATING to argue against. You got those definitions wrong 240 years ago ... and are too arrogant to admit this mistake ... Conservatism is RELATED to right-wing, but it isnt the same.
Burke supported attempts to wane the personal exercise of power by the king, to establish justice and then independence for the American colonists, and a great philosopher, like Socrates, who wrote no great philosophical treatise either. Sure he was a Whig, not a Tory, much less a Jacobite (not to be muddled with Jacobin). But the original Tories are virtually extinct. You meet the occasional one in the Prayer Book Society as I found out to my shock and horror, but the so-called 'Tories' of today are really Whigs; and they wear the blue ribbon of the Whigs still, not the red ribbon of the original, now virtually extinct, Tories.
He says right out that he does not think that a philosophy of politics is a good road to follow - that you need to follow reality as it changes. Inductive as you say - the essence of conservatism .
I was telling a mate only yesterday how I was trying to learn about Burke - and how tiresome it was filtering through the leftist filter - thanks, David :-)
The passage against (batty Rousseau's) universalism reminded me of a thought of Herder's, something like I have seen a Frenchman, and an Englishman, never seen a Chinaman but have no reason to doubt their existence, but I've never seen just a man
Thank you , is there a book you might recommend on Burke ? My problem with only having a rudimentary understanding of certain subjects , sometimes it hard to know which people are fair and knowledgeable about a subject and those who think they are . It took me a while to find you , and I like your approach. Last the opinion he had about keeping the rules steady so it works better for the whole . As you know here in America? The democrats are trying that right now , as a means to circumvent our constitution. And FA Hayek said something similar about man being civilized against his wishes, that check of our appetites, allowed us to grow and prosper. Thank you again !! Nick
Thanks for this David. May I suggest more on the French revolution. Seems rather apt at present. Unfortunately. I was quite happy with inches and feet, but I was taught maths as a child.
If anyone is interested, Churchill's "Thoughts and Adventures' circa 1930s has a chapter on political consistency including the question David raises about Burke. Very readable with references to various statesmen including of course special pleading on Churchill's own behalf re his own changes (I learned the great 'hobgoblins of little minds quote, per Emerson).
Could you do a talk or video about "The rough wooing" ? I'd love to know your perspective about this period of history. There's plenty of Scots material about this but not much from the English side of things.
Ah, if only I did feel flush enough to invite Dr Starkey to lunch! The emphasis on inductive versus deductive is a real aha moment - and the basis for understanding a conservative philosophy which is highly sympathetic and instinctively pluralistic. There is an imbalance between the deductive and inductive which stretches way beyond politics. As someone who works with numerically driven models, I am constantly amazed at how much attention people pay to the internal workings of a calculation engine (deduction), and how little to whether the inputs and assumptions needed to grind the whole thing into motion actually tally at all with the messy real world (effectively, the induction of looking at the facts first). But: I would claim it is precisely the inductive approach which would make Burke friendlier to the modern state (at least a One Nation Tory, perhaps even a liberal Keynsian) than most of his self-identified supporters today would assume. Based on the evidence, it would be reasonable to highly skeptical of the social contract in the late C18. Two centuries later the body of evidence available is radically different - social contracts work a whole lot better than the alternatives - even taking all the various excesses into account. I would argue that lack of this awareness, and a respect for tradition which now includes a century or more of social democracy, creates a curious situation in which many people today who claim to be conservative are actually profoundly ignorant of tradition and history - and adopt positions which are about as far from "conserving" anything as one could imagine. Effectively anarchistic!
Tom Paine was the antithesis of Edmund Burke. Tom Paine had a Rousseauian outlook, despite his Englishness (Burke was an Irishman BTW). Burke and Paine aligned over the American Revolution but broke over the French Revolution.
Burke was Anglo-Irish, not Irish. He was not a Catholic, he could not speak the Irish language and lived virtually his entire life in Protestant Ireland away from the Irish Peasantry. He is and always was Anglo-Irish. Which today we would call British.
Burkes mother was Mary Nagle , a catholic girl from Cork , his father of course was Richard Burke , a member of the Ascendancy who's Norman ancestors married into the old Gaelic families . Burkes cousin was Catholic educator and candidate for Catholic sainthood Nano Nagle , and Burke himself was a proponent of Catholic emancipation . In other words, yes he was indeed an Irishman , as much or more then most of the plastic paddy's prowling pubs on St Patrick's day in this era ...
@@johnduder7583 It still wouldn't be correct to call him just "Irish", he was Anglo-Irish. Burke was an Anglican, and would furiously defend the Anglican Church. Also as you mentioned earlier he had Anglo-Norman ancestors, from a Knight who participated in the invasion of Ireland during the reign of Henry II.
2:13 looking at Burke's view as about maintaining stability & continuity via tradition, and preventing arbitrary uses of power, Burke's opposition of George III and the French Revolution are coherent.
Watching David Starkey wearing a knitted vest and over that a wool shawl, drinking I am sure hot tea, and coughing - brings home to me how expensive heating homes is in England now. Thanks to Charles and climate activists! This superb historian must be freezing. Too bad his job requires he live in Great Britain. We are much more comfortable in the USA. Maybe he could have a winter home in Florida?
Mr. Starkey, please do a video on the similarities and distinctions between the English, French, and American revolutions, and their conservative (or classical liberal) traditions.
I find it interesting listening to you explain the who and the what that combined to change politics to lead us towards the events of today. Now we have no chance of knowing who is controlling the global political system that is fronted by WEF.
14:00 "There is no universal model of man" (which the French revolution sought to export into the world). If Conservatism has as its reference the national tradition, to be developed organically "within itself", why is Britain so aggressively imperialistic? Why does half of Africa have to swallow Burke's conservatism? And even passively: Why did Britain fail so catastrophically in the COLLEGE of nations which is the EU? Could it be that Burke, a self-confessed child of his time, saw a WAR of aggression as the constitutional last resort?
I have to disagree with Dr. Starkey on the metric system. I know it's French, and saying this gives me no pleasure, but as a builder (now retired) who grew up with both systems, I think metric is superior for engineering and construction. The fact that it does not do base twelve, while an educational impediment which can easily be addressed by other means, is not really a problem in everyday life.
It's not French it is English, invented by John Wilkins in the mid 1600's I forget the exact date , but Dr Starkey is wrong in thinking it does not work. The unit of measure for architectural drawings are millimetres, why? It dispenses with decimal places and thus is less prone to misreading and reduces waste (there are many other reasons of course). Also and this might shock the purists, the modern inch is based on the metric system and has been since 1950.
I chuckle at David's much-used quip that 'all bad ideas are French', but as a scientist, the metric System Internationale is a god-send. And in Australia in the mid 1960s, we had the good sense to adopt it.
It's interesting how the contemporary ideological labels "liberal" and "conservative" fail to correspond to the ways Burke defined those terms. Modern "conservatives" are the epitome of "liberal" in Burke's sense: for them, it's all about individuals expressing their supposedly unchained ideas. Liberalism retains a fair share of that outlook, as well, mixed with a considerable measure of French Revolution-style logic, but also with a dash of genuinely Burkean conservatism: the recognition that politics exist to serve the long-term interest of the community or nation.
Bingo! Especially in America. What's a shame is the fact of how misrepresented American political history is - - especially because it is written in ahistorical and lens of a cultural war victor and an attempt to paint the actual political history in America, which is far more "Conservative" and inherits the tradition of Burke. The Modern American "Conservative" is essentially the equivalent to that of a Jacobin or a Jeffersonian Liberal, and it has been that way for a while. When one takes the real view of Burke, whose writings were not really a sensible cohesive attempt at creating an ideology, but rather the inheritance of the way of Western Civilization since the rise of the Catholic Church to predominance in the 4th Century that he is simply transcribing to a correspondence with a certain lucky Frenchman who cared to see what he thought. What Burke says, at least from what I've read of his work is fairly "liberal" in the sense that it agrees with some of the pretexts of Liberalism, i.e. Locke's proposal of Natural Rights (not Tabula Rasa) but furthering it through his belief in the inheritance of rights which not only corresponds to natural rights but is ordained by God to be inherited by all men and is given a more practical and real meaning than just the term natural. It is easier to confuse what is nature, especially nowadays, but it is not easy to confuse your inheritance and what you are to deserve. The American Conservative used to be quite Burkean. Hamilton, the first American Conservative, admired Burke deeply and attempted to pursue his own path and modelled himself and the ideology he wished to build under Burke's philosophy. I could go on more but I don't want to use my brainpower right now at 2:50 AM tbh.
I really enjoyed this talk, thank you Mr. Starkey. But I don't think the break between the pre-1789 Whig Burke and the post-1789 anti-revolutionary Burke is very great. When William Pitt introduced a motion in favour of parliamentary reform in 1782, Burke opposed it on the grounds of prescription, the same argument he used against the Jacobins in the 1790s. I'm really looking forward to your talk on Dizzy, I hope you'll do one on Lord Salisbury too.
David explains the conservatism very well and helps me understand it. A question lingers in my mind, ‘would you only mind your own business when the rest of the world is suffering? For example, the women in Afghanistan? ‘
Why is it our duty to correct the behavior of other peoples who although may have a rather primitive and uncivilized way of behavior? In your country is one thing, but Internationally is another.
I like the type of Conservatisim where we balance the books. Not the new supply side Conservativism that leads to deficits,billionaires and monopolies that Mr Starkey advocates for. If you think putting generations of our descendants into debt is conservative neither you nor Mr Starkey is paying attention
I attribute what you're saying to a disease which has infected conservatism in the US and the UK called libertarianism. I prefer a Bismarck style of conservatism based on pragmatism. He was the man who introduced the modern welfare state. Many today think of it as left-wing, but in fact it was first introduced by a conservative.
Unlimited freedom is not something that has ever existed among humans, nor ever can. If we are to live among others, and we must, we always give up some extreme “liberties”, like the right to kill others, it is the nature of our species. There is always a balance between maximizing freedoms that aren’t harmful to the group, and forbidding those that are. Here in the US, ultra-conservatives often say “I can do whatever I want”, but it’s simply not true; we can’t mow people down with cars or guns, nor even yell “fire” in a crowded theater. In the ‘90s many citizens tried to refuse paying taxes, on the basis that tax violates their individual freedoms, that didn’t fly. Citizens have two fundamental duties, as well as many rights: to obey the laws and to pay their taxes, both benefit the societal group.
Edmund Burke was also one of the fathers to modern Culture- arts. His good ideas reached France, Germany. From here we can say the 1800s Victorian times are the roots to modern culture today. Opening up the way for experience. In part to the back lash to the hard cold-blooded rationality and scientific reasoning. Opened up the doors to the unknown and feelings and the inner man. Sigmund Freud/ supernatural/ clairvoyance. Birth of Spiritualism got popular in Victorian times. Birth of the autobiography. in other words, birth of liberalism. Where Neo Marxism/ Socialism crept in pushing authoritative God like Holy science to destroy liberalism.
How much can the Magna Carta be blamed for American political development? Is it all French/Roman liberalism? Are you discounting Englands own influence or is it too small? I’d love a talk on it and why that one thing out of the Magna Carta has/had captured the mind of the founders of America.
It seems Burke was an early commentator of social affairs, and it appears his observations were accurate. They are valuable for the information they impart about British politics, but lack sufficient depth to tell us much about France and its political landscape. Certainly, his views on Russo‘s (sp) can be challenged as being political and sophistic. His Wig peers did rightly in challenging his commitment. Chomsky is our Burke and vice versa
Random question of two parts. What is your opinion of the historian Catharine Macaulay? Both as a historian of her time and of her specific response to Edmund Burke's reflections. I've heard much talk of Paine and Wollstonecraft's responses, particularly Paine's as Wollstonecraft is better remembered for her protofeminism but I've never seen Macaulay's response debated. I would have thought a response from a historian arguing over Burke's interpretation of Britain's history would have been a worthy area to view the disagreement yet it doesn't appear to be so.
I’ve never shared this opinion of Burke somehow being the “father” of conservatism. For one thing, the man was a Whig; the liberal radicals of their day. Perhaps he is the father of NEO-conservatism, but certainly not traditional conservatism. There is just no way.
Sorry to disagree, but your OPINIONS on the metric / imperial system is just that ... an OPINION. The british system is "a bit s.h.i.t.e." for one simple reason: You divide / multiply everything by NOT 10 ... which makes math and thus SCIENCE much easier! If the person who invented the foot had divided it into 10 inches ... and declared 10 feet to be a yard it would have worked better, but "you" didnt. And dont get me started on your old currency! The point I have to agree with is the calendar ... but the clock (especially the "60 minutes = 1 hour is requiring recalculations in science all the time. [One of the things the french tried was to create a "church of the supreme being" ... and the architect who was drawing plans for a temple (Étienne-Louis Boullée) could even give Adolf Hitler & Albert Speer a run for their money on the GIGANTISM of the designs.]
Mr. Starkey, thanks for the great entertaining historical videos, they just become worse and worse. You put too much of your questionable personal political views into them, that makes them more and more very unscientific. I thought you wanted to escape content being too politicalyl charged by 3rd grader politics and semi woke stuff. Sirry but you more and more sounds like Boris, fake neo conservative and all. It really spoils your content lately. Its totally your choice to go out of this world sounding like Grampa Simpson, but i miss the serious scholar.
Please join the David Starkey Members' Club via Patreon www.patreon.com/davidstarkeytalks or Subscribestar www.subscribestar.com/david-starkey-talks and submit questions for members Q & A videos. Also visit www.davidstarkey.com to make a donation and visit the channel store shop.davidstarkey.com. Thank you for watching.
you are extraordinary in intellect & wisdom. its a winning combo from my POV.
talk about 'enlightenment' yes. Rousseau could have been a smidge more pragmatic
For us, selfish as it is to say, Starkey's 'cancellation' was good in that instead of going to the media and producers, he now comes directly to us. The gate keepers made themselves unemployed.
I couldn’t agree more. The ‘cancelling’ of great people - such as David Starkey - may be painful for them at first, but what a blessing for the wider world where most of us live. There could be nothing more enriching than having ‘Starkey Direct’ rather than via the hideous legacy media and their stormtroopers, or having to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to hear him speak. Respects from the English Chaplaincy Istanbul - which is still very Burkean in nature and moos like a cow rather than screeching and scratching like a Woke grasshopper.
Very well said.
Happy Valentines Day David. I am sure all the Starkey-ians who watch your videos here will join me in saying how much we appreciate and love you! xx
I love your videos. Very pleased you made the move to independent content creation. I wish you all the best and hope that your vast knowledge inspires and educates many. x
Fascinating. I hadn't thought about Burke since 1963 when I was at school. Your views on his attitude to the monarchy are what I remember my history teacher telling us. He was, as I remember, a supporter of Cromwell.
Thanks Dr Starkey.So gratified that you have covered Burke in this episode.A very rich vignette of his contribution to political sanity!
Such a privilege and a pleasure to listen to David Starkey giving us the benefit of his way of thinking about history. I hope his channel continues to thrive.
Reflections on the Revolution in France is simply brilliant. I'd like to think of myself as a Burkean conservative. We need more Burke.
"I'd like to think of myself as..." is a pretty tepid statement.
@@shawn6669 alright negative nancy
@@samwelguy stating an opinion doesn't make it negative, and don't call me nancy, chuckles. Have a nice day.
The one thing "the english" NEED to accept and understand is the CORRECT DEFINITION for "left-/right-wing", which came from the French Revolution ... but basically everyone in the english-speaking world attaches "stuff that doesnt belong" to those sides, which is the reason why these terms HAVE NO FIXED MEANING for "you guys". Just look up the "left-right political spectrum" page in Wikipedia and LOOK AT THE CHANGE HISTORY!
The correct (=continental european!!!!) definition is important, because this makes it EASY to understand the difference between communism and fascism ... because the former is left-wing extremist marxism and the latter is right-wing extremist marxism ... which you can easily SEE when you look at the seating arrangement in the german parliament of 1933. So anyone claiming "Nazis are left-wing" is DEAD WRONG (and uneducated) ... which is FRUSTRATING to argue against.
You got those definitions wrong 240 years ago ... and are too arrogant to admit this mistake ...
Conservatism is RELATED to right-wing, but it isnt the same.
@@shawn6669 Don't get your knickers in a twist Nancy
David Starkey in my living room. Enlightening the family with 22:30 of analysis and comment. Not cancelled in this house.
Excellent presentation! Thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening - many thanks.
Burke supported attempts to wane the personal exercise of power by the king, to establish justice and then independence for the American colonists, and a great philosopher, like Socrates, who wrote no great philosophical treatise either. Sure he was a Whig, not a Tory, much less a Jacobite (not to be muddled with Jacobin). But the original Tories are virtually extinct. You meet the occasional one in the Prayer Book Society as I found out to my shock and horror, but the so-called 'Tories' of today are really Whigs; and they wear the blue ribbon of the Whigs still, not the red ribbon of the original, now virtually extinct, Tories.
Great to see you still engaged Rev West.
He says right out that he does not think that a philosophy of politics is a good road to follow - that you need to follow reality as it changes. Inductive as you say - the essence of conservatism .
I was telling a mate only yesterday how I was trying to learn about Burke - and how tiresome it was filtering through the leftist filter - thanks, David :-)
The passage against (batty Rousseau's) universalism reminded me of a thought of Herder's, something like I have seen a Frenchman, and an Englishman, never seen a Chinaman but have no reason to doubt their existence, but I've never seen just a man
Thank you , is there a book you might recommend on Burke ? My problem with only having a rudimentary understanding of certain subjects , sometimes it hard to know which people are fair and knowledgeable about a subject and those who think they are . It took me a while to find you , and I like your approach. Last the opinion he had about keeping the rules steady so it works better for the whole . As you know here in America? The democrats are trying that right now , as a means to circumvent our constitution. And FA Hayek said something similar about man being civilized against his wishes, that check of our appetites, allowed us to grow and prosper. Thank you again !! Nick
Thanks for this explanation. This is exactly what I needed re: Burke’s ethos. Wonderful as always, Dr. Starkey.
Every new upload from David Starkey seems like the best ever, until the next broadcast. Thank you.
Thanks for this David. May I suggest more on the French revolution. Seems rather apt at present. Unfortunately.
I was quite happy with inches and feet, but I was taught maths as a child.
Yes, please do add more about the French Rev.
If anyone is interested, Churchill's "Thoughts and Adventures' circa 1930s has a chapter on political consistency including the question David raises about Burke. Very readable with references to various statesmen including of course special pleading on Churchill's own behalf re his own changes (I learned the great 'hobgoblins of little minds quote, per Emerson).
Could you do a talk or video about "The rough wooing" ?
I'd love to know your perspective about this period of history. There's plenty of Scots material about this but not much from the English side of things.
Ah, if only I did feel flush enough to invite Dr Starkey to lunch! The emphasis on inductive versus deductive is a real aha moment - and the basis for understanding a conservative philosophy which is highly sympathetic and instinctively pluralistic. There is an imbalance between the deductive and inductive which stretches way beyond politics. As someone who works with numerically driven models, I am constantly amazed at how much attention people pay to the internal workings of a calculation engine (deduction), and how little to whether the inputs and assumptions needed to grind the whole thing into motion actually tally at all with the messy real world (effectively, the induction of looking at the facts first). But: I would claim it is precisely the inductive approach which would make Burke friendlier to the modern state (at least a One Nation Tory, perhaps even a liberal Keynsian) than most of his self-identified supporters today would assume. Based on the evidence, it would be reasonable to highly skeptical of the social contract in the late C18. Two centuries later the body of evidence available is radically different - social contracts work a whole lot better than the alternatives - even taking all the various excesses into account. I would argue that lack of this awareness, and a respect for tradition which now includes a century or more of social democracy, creates a curious situation in which many people today who claim to be conservative are actually profoundly ignorant of tradition and history - and adopt positions which are about as far from "conserving" anything as one could imagine. Effectively anarchistic!
Hello Johnny West.
Are there any books you might suggest to read up on?
I know little about social contract for starters.
Thank you.
Had great enjoyment listening while I battled stubborn screws in several kitchen cabinets
Tom Paine was the antithesis of Edmund Burke. Tom Paine had a Rousseauian outlook, despite his Englishness (Burke was an Irishman BTW). Burke and Paine aligned over the American Revolution but broke over the French Revolution.
Burke was Anglo-Irish, not Irish. He was not a Catholic, he could not speak the Irish language and lived virtually his entire life in Protestant Ireland away from the Irish Peasantry. He is and always was Anglo-Irish. Which today we would call British.
Burkes mother was Mary Nagle , a catholic girl from Cork , his father of course was Richard Burke , a member of the Ascendancy who's Norman ancestors married into the old Gaelic families .
Burkes cousin was Catholic educator and candidate for Catholic sainthood Nano Nagle ,
and Burke himself was a proponent of Catholic emancipation .
In other words, yes he was indeed an Irishman , as much or
more then most of the plastic
paddy's prowling pubs on St Patrick's day in this era ...
Burke was Anglo-Irish, actually.
@@johnduder7583 It still wouldn't be correct to call him just "Irish", he was Anglo-Irish. Burke was an Anglican, and would furiously defend the Anglican Church. Also as you mentioned earlier he had Anglo-Norman ancestors, from a Knight who participated in the invasion of Ireland during the reign of Henry II.
Interesting perspective. Thank you.
2:13 looking at Burke's view as about maintaining stability & continuity via tradition, and preventing arbitrary uses of power, Burke's opposition of George III and the French Revolution are coherent.
I loved this talk. As an Irishman I'd love a talk on daniel o connell also.
I was very excited when I saw the headline for this!
That is perhaps the mist biting critique of the French I have had the pleasure to enjoy.
Watching David Starkey wearing a knitted vest and over that a wool shawl, drinking I am sure hot tea, and coughing - brings home to me how expensive heating homes is in England now. Thanks to Charles and climate activists! This superb historian must be freezing. Too bad his job requires he live in Great Britain. We are much more comfortable in the USA. Maybe he could have a winter home in Florida?
Very interesting, thank you.
Mr. Starkey, please do a video on the similarities and distinctions between the English, French, and American revolutions, and their conservative (or classical liberal) traditions.
Great vlogs 👍
Brilliant as always.
Thank you Dr. Starkey for criticizing the metric system, which is terrible.
Fantastic video
I find it interesting listening to you explain the who and the what that combined to change politics to lead us towards the events of today. Now we have no chance of knowing who is controlling the global political system that is fronted by WEF.
I’m not sure the concrete thinking about “free” works for me but the idea that we grow up in a culture/society works.
great video!
Love this.
Good one!
14:00 "There is no universal model of man" (which the French revolution sought to export into the world). If Conservatism has as its reference the national tradition, to be developed organically "within itself", why is Britain so aggressively imperialistic? Why does half of Africa have to swallow Burke's conservatism? And even passively: Why did Britain fail so catastrophically in the COLLEGE of nations which is the EU? Could it be that Burke, a self-confessed child of his time, saw a WAR of aggression as the constitutional last resort?
I have to disagree with Dr. Starkey on the metric system. I know it's French, and saying this gives me no pleasure, but as a builder (now retired) who grew up with both systems, I think metric is superior for engineering and construction. The fact that it does not do base twelve, while an educational impediment which can easily be addressed by other means, is not really a problem in everyday life.
It's not French it is English, invented by John Wilkins in the mid 1600's I forget the exact date , but Dr Starkey is wrong in thinking it does not work. The unit of measure for architectural drawings are millimetres, why? It dispenses with decimal places and thus is less prone to misreading and reduces waste (there are many other reasons of course). Also and this might shock the purists, the modern inch is based on the metric system and has been since 1950.
@@ShinobiYaka I knew it was invented by an Englishman, but can you elaborate on the metric inch?
I chuckle at David's much-used quip that 'all bad ideas are French', but as a scientist, the metric System Internationale is a god-send. And in Australia in the mid 1960s, we had the good sense to adopt it.
It's interesting how the contemporary ideological labels "liberal" and "conservative" fail to correspond to the ways Burke defined those terms. Modern "conservatives" are the epitome of "liberal" in Burke's sense: for them, it's all about individuals expressing their supposedly unchained ideas. Liberalism retains a fair share of that outlook, as well, mixed with a considerable measure of French Revolution-style logic, but also with a dash of genuinely Burkean conservatism: the recognition that politics exist to serve the long-term interest of the community or nation.
Bingo! Especially in America. What's a shame is the fact of how misrepresented American political history is - - especially because it is written in ahistorical and lens of a cultural war victor and an attempt to paint the actual political history in America, which is far more "Conservative" and inherits the tradition of Burke. The Modern American "Conservative" is essentially the equivalent to that of a Jacobin or a Jeffersonian Liberal, and it has been that way for a while. When one takes the real view of Burke, whose writings were not really a sensible cohesive attempt at creating an ideology, but rather the inheritance of the way of Western Civilization since the rise of the Catholic Church to predominance in the 4th Century that he is simply transcribing to a correspondence with a certain lucky Frenchman who cared to see what he thought. What Burke says, at least from what I've read of his work is fairly "liberal" in the sense that it agrees with some of the pretexts of Liberalism, i.e. Locke's proposal of Natural Rights (not Tabula Rasa) but furthering it through his belief in the inheritance of rights which not only corresponds to natural rights but is ordained by God to be inherited by all men and is given a more practical and real meaning than just the term natural. It is easier to confuse what is nature, especially nowadays, but it is not easy to confuse your inheritance and what you are to deserve. The American Conservative used to be quite Burkean. Hamilton, the first American Conservative, admired Burke deeply and attempted to pursue his own path and modelled himself and the ideology he wished to build under Burke's philosophy. I could go on more but I don't want to use my brainpower right now at 2:50 AM tbh.
I really enjoyed this talk, thank you Mr. Starkey. But I don't think the break between the pre-1789 Whig Burke and the post-1789 anti-revolutionary Burke is very great. When William Pitt introduced a motion in favour of parliamentary reform in 1782, Burke opposed it on the grounds of prescription, the same argument he used against the Jacobins in the 1790s.
I'm really looking forward to your talk on Dizzy, I hope you'll do one on Lord Salisbury too.
David explains the conservatism very well and helps me understand it. A question lingers in my mind, ‘would you only mind your own business when the rest of the world is suffering? For example, the women in Afghanistan? ‘
Why is it our duty to correct the behavior of other peoples who although may have a rather primitive and uncivilized way of behavior? In your country is one thing, but Internationally is another.
even though I don't agree with Starkey political views he's very good at telling about history (historian).
Well said
I like the type of Conservatisim where we balance the books.
Not the new supply side Conservativism that leads to deficits,billionaires and monopolies that Mr Starkey advocates for.
If you think putting generations of our descendants into debt is conservative neither you nor Mr Starkey is paying attention
I attribute what you're saying to a disease which has infected conservatism in the US and the UK called libertarianism. I prefer a Bismarck style of conservatism based on pragmatism. He was the man who introduced the modern welfare state. Many today think of it as left-wing, but in fact it was first introduced by a conservative.
Brilliant
Really good
Interessante
Unlimited freedom is not something that has ever existed among humans, nor ever can. If we are to live among others, and we must, we always give up some extreme “liberties”, like the right to kill others, it is the nature of our species. There is always a balance between maximizing freedoms that aren’t harmful to the group, and forbidding those that are. Here in the US, ultra-conservatives often say “I can do whatever I want”, but it’s simply not true; we can’t mow people down with cars or guns, nor even yell “fire” in a crowded theater. In the ‘90s many citizens tried to refuse paying taxes, on the basis that tax violates their individual freedoms, that didn’t fly. Citizens have two fundamental duties, as well as many rights: to obey the laws and to pay their taxes, both benefit the societal group.
Who was that last person you mentioned?
A great Anglo Irish statesman.
Edmund Burke was also one of the fathers to modern Culture- arts. His good ideas reached France, Germany. From here we can say the 1800s Victorian times are the roots to modern culture today.
Opening up the way for experience. In part to the back lash to the hard cold-blooded rationality and scientific reasoning. Opened up the doors to the unknown and feelings and the inner man. Sigmund Freud/ supernatural/ clairvoyance. Birth of Spiritualism got popular in Victorian times. Birth of the autobiography.
in other words, birth of liberalism. Where Neo Marxism/ Socialism crept in pushing authoritative God like Holy science to destroy liberalism.
How much can the Magna Carta be blamed for American political development? Is it all French/Roman liberalism? Are you discounting Englands own influence or is it too small? I’d love a talk on it and why that one thing out of the Magna Carta has/had captured the mind of the founders of America.
Any thoughts on his "relationship" with Thomas Paine?
Burke considered himself Irish and was considered by the his cohort as being Irish. Until it became fashionable to include him.
Better self-referential than self-reverential!
He not only predicted Napoleon, he predicted Justin Trudeau....(I'm a Canadian aghast at JT)
How does Burkean Conservatism differ from other forms of Conservatism?
It seems Burke was an early commentator of social affairs, and it appears his observations were accurate. They are valuable for the information they impart about British politics, but lack sufficient depth to tell us much about France and its political landscape. Certainly, his views on Russo‘s (sp) can be challenged as being political and sophistic. His Wig peers did rightly in challenging his commitment. Chomsky is our Burke and vice versa
There is no point asking Starkey any questions here as he doesn't read the comments.
I think you need to wind your clock up!
We are born with the notion of freedom, not the literal pathological sense of freedom. We are born free, free to prevent tyranny David.
Random question of two parts. What is your opinion of the historian Catharine Macaulay? Both as a historian of her time and of her specific response to Edmund Burke's reflections.
I've heard much talk of Paine and Wollstonecraft's responses, particularly Paine's as Wollstonecraft is better remembered for her protofeminism but I've never seen Macaulay's response debated. I would have thought a response from a historian arguing over Burke's interpretation of Britain's history would have been a worthy area to view the disagreement yet it doesn't appear to be so.
Do I spy an A. Lange & Söhne watch, with crocodile skin strap my dear Dr Starkey? Exquisite.
Why doesn't English go back to the old way of measuring then?
Because most of us have only ten fingers and ten toes!
That picture over the clock in the background behind Starkey is too small. It should be at least twice as big if not more to look pleasing to the eye.
I’ve never shared this opinion of Burke somehow being the “father” of conservatism. For one thing, the man was a Whig; the liberal radicals of their day. Perhaps he is the father of NEO-conservatism, but certainly not traditional conservatism. There is just no way.
Sorry to disagree, but your OPINIONS on the metric / imperial system is just that ... an OPINION. The british system is "a bit s.h.i.t.e." for one simple reason:
You divide / multiply everything by NOT 10 ... which makes math and thus SCIENCE much easier! If the person who invented the foot had divided it into 10 inches ... and declared 10 feet to be a yard it would have worked better, but "you" didnt.
And dont get me started on your old currency!
The point I have to agree with is the calendar ... but the clock (especially the "60 minutes = 1 hour is requiring recalculations in science all the time.
[One of the things the french tried was to create a "church of the supreme being" ... and the architect who was drawing plans for a temple (Étienne-Louis Boullée) could even give Adolf Hitler & Albert Speer a run for their money on the GIGANTISM of the designs.]
Why are you still following him now???
Mr. Starkey, thanks for the great entertaining historical videos, they just become worse and worse. You put too much of your questionable personal political views into them, that makes them more and more very unscientific. I thought you wanted to escape content being too politicalyl charged by 3rd grader politics and semi woke stuff. Sirry but you more and more sounds like Boris, fake neo conservative and all. It really spoils your content lately. Its totally your choice to go out of this world sounding like Grampa Simpson, but i miss the serious scholar.
David Starkey talks - too much . With too little sense.