It all started with this dumb comment from Eric Fuller, one of the victims of the shooter in Tuscon, given to Democracy NOW and picked up by Politico:
“Their [Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and John Boehner] wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism…”
…and it turned into a short discussion on Foucault, continental philosophy, and the differences between Burkean and Thomistic understandings of conservatism. From my comments:
Burke’s prescriptions only go halfway though. Most conservatives in America would argue that our rights and liberties can never be surrendered to government. In fact, government is designed to protect those rights, and any so-called “rights” we would infer that government prohibits aren’t really liberties at all, but license opposed to liberty just as surely as tyranny is.
If you believe that, then congratulations. You are an adherent to Catholic natural law philosophy, and in a long tradition of thinkers and saints who have believed the same for centuries.
Jim Hoeft runs a great public square over at Bearing Drift. Glad to be a part of it — where else can you get Virginia politics, philosophy, policy, and the occasional sports commentary all under one roof???