Not Burke! Not Burke!
By But foreign policy questions are McCain’s passion, he’s chosen to put them at the center of his campaign, and there’s really nothing at all Burkean about McCain’s take on them. The “our country is democratic, democracy is awesome, therefore we should try to conquer the entire world in the name of spreading democracy” syllogism at the core of McCain “Enduring Peace Built on Freedom” is straight out of the French Revolution.
Quite. Read Uday Mehta Singh’s Liberalism and Empire for a good account of the differences between Burke and the Mills on colonialism and aggressive foreign policy. I’d add that a certain rump “Burkeanism” is almost a default position for a politician who doesn’t really care about domestic policy issues; it’s easy enough to disguise indifference as the appreciation for slow, careful reform.
…indeed, it’s just this kind of thing that Burke would warn against:
Suppose we replaced the mayor of your town with a twentysomething foreigner who didn’t speak English but did have a ton of firepower at his disposal and no real checks on his power. You’d probably feel that was a step in the wrong direction. And conversely, it’s not genuinely reasonable to expect relatively junior Army officers to do this sort of job well.
With the added insight that producing twentysomething imperial viceroys who have had the experience of virtually unchecked power is something that has never been good for a healthy democracy…