Rand Paul, modern-day Edmund Burke?
Speaking yesterday at a National Review breakfast, Sen. Rand Paul R-Ky. explained what he thought about the Tea Party movement vs. the Occupy Wall Street movement, as Jon Ward reports in the Huffington Post.
“The Tea Party, I always say, is more like the American Revolution, and Occupy Wall Street is more the French Revolution,” Paul said.
Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" comparing and contrasting the two revolutions was a seminal work of conservatism and still provides insight into our political dichotomy. Sometimes I tell people I'm a Burkean conservative, by which I mean someone who doesn't resist everything that's new but wants to be careful about what we abandon, to make sure we always keep our best to build on. Maybe I should start calling myself a "Paulian libertarian," i.e. someone with both libertarian and conservative impulses who doesn't freak out when those impulses occasionally collide.
