'The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left' (review)

Yvonne Zipp | By Yvonne Zipp |
on January 07, 2014 at 7:00 AM, updated January 07, 2014 at 7:18 AM

In our fractious modern age, it can appear that Republicans and Democrats differ on everything other than the color of the sky.

The Great Debate.jpg"The Great Debate," Yuval Levin, Basic Books, $27.99

But Yuval Levin, editor and founder of National Affairs, argues that the divide, at its heart, can be traced back to two prominent 18th-century thinkers: Edmund Burke, an Irish-born British parliamentarian who has been considered both the founder of both modern conservatism and liberalism; and Thomas Paine, the son of a Quaker corset maker who, despite just five years of schooling, rose to be one of the age's most original thinkers.

The two men, who first met in 1788 and had a meal or two together, conducted a dialogue that continues to inform American political parties' today, Levin argues in his excellently researched new book, "The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left."

"In both cases, the parties to the great debate of the late eighteenth century clearly prefigured key elements of the left-right divide of our time," Levin writes. "The arguments between them had to do much more than the particular promise and peril of the American and French revolutions, and they have lasted because they brought to the surface a disagreement within liberalism that has never lost its salience."

It's too simplistic to argue that Republicans are automatically for Burke and Democrats automatically for Paine, Levin writes.

"No less an icon of the American right than Ronald Reagan accepted the Republican Party nomination for president in 1980 by reminding his supporters of Paine's call for transforming failed governing institutions," Levin wrote. "No less an icon of the American left than Barack Obama has reportedly described himself as a Burkean eager to avoid sudden change."

Paine was for revolution; Burke was for evolution. Rather than throw out everything that came before, he argued, a moderate path would create change on the back of tradition. Levin arranges their arguments by philosophy, drawing most heavily from Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" and Paine's "The Rights of Man," which he wrote in response to Burke.

Both supported the American colonists but reached their conclusions from very different paths. Paine, author of "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man," was a believer in self-government and the right of individuals to self-determination. Burke blamed the British for making life untenable for the colonists. While he didn't argue Parliament's right to tax the colonists, he felt it was bad policy to make citizens so miserable that they felt like throwing off British rule.

Where the two differed and clashed most famously was over the French Revolution, Levin writes.

While Burke was appalled by what he saw as the excesses of the French Revolution, which to his mind destroyed but did not build, Paine was so delighted by the principles espoused by the revolutionaries that he moved to France. (The firebrand spent one year in prison for having allies who weren't deemed radical enough.)

Levin, a self-confessed Burkean, spends more ink on Burke's arguments. But that's understandable, given that Paine's arguments are more easily understood by 21st century mores. Burke takes a little more nuanced explanation, especially when he argues in favor of prejudice as a useful societal shorthand. (It's worth noting that Burke was in favor of Catholic rights in Ireland, against slavery and spent years trying to impeach Britain's chief governor in India for abuses against Indians.)

Levin quotes extensively from both writers – fans of both men will find plenty of passages to cite. That can occasionally run him into trouble, since few writers are the equal of either Burke or Paine. But in "The Great Debate," Levin isn't so much focused on rhetorical flourishes of his own as thoughtfully laying out the two men's philosophies. Under Levin's careful analysis, both Burke, who argued on behalf of prudence and moderation, and Paine, who was for a radical egalitarianism, deserve the title as fathers of modern liberalism.
