Barack a Burkean?

Ably dispensing with David Brooks’s and the equally egregious Jon Meacham’s recent musings that Obama is a “Burkean,” Yuval Levin at the Corner writes:

… I cannot imagine how anyone observing the Obama administration could think the president a Burkean.

Like Levin, I also cannot imagine how someone could think it, but I can easily imagine how someone could say it: if the person in question is an intellectual whore. An intellectual whore, moreover, who knows that for a liberal in today’s society, especially for a liberal pretending to have a deep, conservative side, there’s no penalty attached to being an intellectual whore.

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The Levin item had been sent to me by Sage McLaughlin, with this note:

I have tremendous respect for Yuval Levin, whose little book on the interworking of science and democracy in American life (recently published by the folks over at the New Atlantis) is packed with useful insights. So I was intrigued to see his post at NRO on the (in my view ridiculous) assertion that Obama is a Burkean. It’s the sort of thing that ought to serve as a product standard at nominally conservative publications, but unfortunately, middle-brow conservative commentary is practically dead.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 03, 2009 09:44 AM | Send