I bring this up because the tea partiers (nee tea baggers) are generally a conservative lot, or at least seem to identify more with traditionally conservative values (especially limited government), and Burke is generally regarded as the father of conservativism.

If I understand Burke correctly (and that’s a big if), his view was that society evolved slowly, and while he was in favor of gradual reform he tended to mistrust radical change.  He abhorred the French revolution because he saw the revolutionaries’ cause as built on abstractions (human freedom, rights) rather than on the practical matters of governing.  He felt that once the revolution was over and the revolutionaries were actually charged with governing, they wouldn’t know what to do and some form of authoritarian would take charge, which is what eventually happened.  Since governing was a process gradually learned, he was interested in conserving what had already been built.

What I’m not clear on in Burke’s thinking is why he supported the American revolution. The distinction he saw between the two would probably explain his views about tea partiers, a group who seem to think of themselves as revolutionaries (or counter-revolutionaries), not bound by a specific, practical ideology but rather abstract notions of human liberty and limited government. Would Burke see them in line with American revolutionaries or French revolutionaries?  What is the difference?

We could have asked this question in 2008 regarding Obama’s rhetoric of change, but I think it’s more interesting to apply it to a group  on the right than on the left, because Burke, if you have to put him somewhere, would fit with the right. One lesson of the Obama presidency, to the chagrin of progressives disappointed in him, is that the actual mechanism of our government, rhetorical histrionics aside, is in line with Burke’s philosophy – slow, hard-earned reform rather than sweeping change.  That mechanism seems written into our system, and is probably our true genius as a society. (Shelby Foote once said our true genius is our ability to compromise, which is maybe another way of saying gradual reform.)

Prediction: I’m apolitical, but I’d say this tea party movement will ultimately prove good for Obama.  Yes, the 2010 elections will likely be a bloodbath for Democrats in Congress.  There is an uprising from the right; people are disaffected with the slow-recovering economy, the deficits, the unemployment. But if Republicans manage a takeover of Congress, or even if they just pick up a significant number of seats, Obama will have to shift to the center pretty quick (a la Bill Clinton in 1994). Things will stabilize in Washington, and the worst effects of the recession will fade in time for Obama to have his “morning again in America” moment in 2012, same as Reagan in 1984 (assuming no one takes a shot at him and he avoids any kind of Tiger Woods-esque scandal). Not much progressive action will happen in the interim (Burke’s slow change), and we’ll all live comfortably in the status quo that emerges in early 2011.