How Much Do You Have to Hate Someone Not to Proselytize?

Francis Schaeffer on the Origins of Relativism in the Church

Words to Remember

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

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Monday, May 4, 2009

Edmund Burke Quote # 2

A series of quotes, actually, all from "Speech Introducing a Motion for an Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Disorders in America," May 9, 1770:
...there is no right that may not terminate in a wrong, if it is not guided by discretion.

[snip]

...it behoved you, before you committed the government to a measure which you could not easily recede from, to provide against the consequences.

[snip]

You are not to commit the government to any measure unless you are sure you can carry it through.
Of the things that appall the conservative, recklessly experimental government has to be near the top of the list. I do not mean that new ideas can never be tried; that would be foolish. But it is also foolish to commit your government to policies and/or actions that have neither a track record of working in the past nor any indication that they are based on the realities of human nature, economics, the physical world, etc. It is foolish to commit your government to actions or policies without, like the good chess player, trying to look several moves ahead to see what might go wrong, and provide against it. It is foolish to commit your government to doing something on the basis of no more than a faint hope that you might be able to make it work, the sheer desire that people might, given your sterling leadership, behave differently than they have over the last several millennia. To govern in this way is to commit your country to great risks with no recourse should something go wrong--and, as the plumber in Moonstruck said all those years ago, "Something always goes wrong."

In this world, there are people who are utterly convinced that if only the smart people--who are invariably the ones that agree with them, of course--were in charge, that all would be well. The reality is that even to think such a thing is to show yourself ignorant of the realities and limitations of human nature, and to set yourself up for disaster. Wiser minds proceed cautiously rather than precipitously, ever mindful of the human race's endless capacity to get things Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.
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