The Great Debate

A noted conservative intellectual and commentator looks to the late 18th century debate between two legendary thinkers, Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, for the roots of America's contemporary political divide. For more than two centuries, our political life has been divided between two distinct and r [...]
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A noted conservative intellectual and commentator looks to the late 18th century debate between two legendary thinkers, Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, for the roots of America's contemporary political divide. For more than two centuries, our political life has been divided between two distinct and recognizable camps: a party of progress and a party of conservation. What is the source of this persistent divide at the heart of our politics? In The Great Debate Yuval Levin explores the origins of the familiar left/right divide in American politics by examining the views of the men who best represent each side of that debate: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. In a groundbreaking exploration of the origins of our political order, Levin shows that our political divide did not originate (as many historians argue) in the French Revolution, but rather in the Anglo-American debate about that revolution. Burke and Paine were both utterly fascinating figures-active in politics, versed in philosophy, and two of the best, most effective and powerful political writers and polemicists in the history of the English speaking world.Levin sets the work of these two men against the dramatic history of their era and shows how they mixed theory and practice to advance their very different notions of liberty, equality, nature, history, reason, revolution, and reform. Paine believed in radical change and saw the American and French Revolutions as catalysts for creating a new society; Burke believed in a significantly more gradual approach with each generation acting merely as part of a long chain of history. These differing approaches to revolution and reform created a division that continues to shape our current political discourse-including issues ranging from gun control and abortion to welfare and economic reform. The struggle between these two worldviews is to define our contemporary society - one begun by Burke and Paine two centuries ago and which we still carry on. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand not only the foundations of our political order but the controversies that fuel Washington's divisiveness, The Great Debate offers a profound examination of what conservatism, liberalism, and the debate between them truly amount to.