Miscellany, January 4

Posted on January 4, 2009 by Walter Olson
  • Canadian blog Gods of the Copybook Headings — and is anyone here unfamiliar with the classic Kipling secular-rightish poem (bonus Bradlaugh content!) alluded to in that title? — interviews its founder/chief blogger about his classical liberal views (via);
  • Bon mot from Julian Sanchez: “Abstraction has a way of masking disagreement: Everybody’s in favor of ‘liberty,’ for some values of ‘liberty.'” The whole article, on efforts by conservatives to organize online, is worth reading.
  • Things are different in Britain. There’s the splash about the Conservative Humanist Association. There’s London’s amazing and dynamic Mayor Boris Johnson. And now comes word that not one but two MPs in David Cameron’s Tory Shadow Cabinet, likely ministers in a future Conservative government, have entered civil partnerships with their same-sex partners. Per Alex Massie, Shadow Justice Minister Nick Herbert “worked for the British Field Sports Society (ie, the fox-hunting and grouse-shooting lobby) for six years before entering parliament. Culturally at least, that organisation is to the Tory party rather what the National Rifle Association is to the GOP.”
  • Tabloid report: Mob sacks and burns Joseph Priestley’s laboratory to protest his Unitarian views (so maybe things have improved since 1791; via; more from Jonathan Rowe)

About Walter Olson

Fellow at a think tank in the Northeast specializing in law. Websites include overlawyered.com. Former columnist for Reason and Times Online (U.K.), contributor to National Review, etc.
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6 Responses to Miscellany, January 4

  1. Steel Phoenix says:
    January 4, 2009 at 9:38 am

    Abstraction is currently most of the glue holding the Republican party together. If they really thought about it, they would realize that they have very little unity on real issues. For them to stay together after the stunning levels of interventionism, fiscal irresponsibility, and Constitution trashing that has been the Bush administration, is an achievement in itself.

  2. mnuez says:
    January 4, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    I’ve long been a fan of the poem, and of course of the Bradlaugh Reading as well. Quite an interesting chap, that Kipling.

  3. Ploni Almoni says:
    January 4, 2009 at 11:22 pm

    Umm, if you’re the secular right, then isn’t the radical leftist Priestley your enemy, as he was Edmund Burke’s enemy? Priestley’s goal was to subvert the English Constitution: he wanted to disestablish the Church of England and import the Revolution from France. I would hope that even the secular right would view that as a bad thing. Not to excuse mob violence against him, but the Unitarians at the time were religiously and politically radical, not the milquetoast pseudo-religious do-gooders of today.

  4. PM says:
    January 5, 2009 at 8:17 am

    @Ploni Almoni

    But being of the “right” doesn’t mean no change at all, does it? Just slower, more measured change with due respect for tradition and the learning of the past? The goal is to improve on the present based on the lessons we have learned from the past. And, despite how he might have been viewed by his contemporaries, Priestley is now a part of our tradition. Certainly there is some part of his legacy that is worth respecting, and incorporating into our future?

    What was radical once is not radical forever.

  5. Caledonian says:
    January 5, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    ‘Radical’ has meaning only relative to context; it has nothing to do with the value of an idea in itself.

    Rejecting ideas for being ‘radical’ is as silly as embracing them for that reason, or rejecting / accepting tradition for being tradition.

    If the ideas are valuable, they are valuable in their own right, and must be judged on their own merits only. If that means accepting what was once radical, so be it; if that means accepting what is currently tradition, so be it; if that means breaking with current tradition, so be it.

  6. Jon Rowe says:
    January 5, 2009 at 1:51 pm

    I agree re the understanding of the term “radical.” Yes, Priestley was a radical. But arguably so too was the American Founding itself. It was radically classically liberal, not liberal in the 20-21st century sense of the term. America in revolting against Great Britain in 1776 did something that got books burned and Algernon Sidney (one of their idols) beheaded by the British authorities 100 years earlier. A notable strand of conservatism believes its goal is to “conserve” that very classical liberalism which Priestley idealized that made America great.

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