We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and among many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take place of it.Burke was right, of course. Christianity was replaced by le Culte de la Raison and le Règne de la Terreur. Uululululu, says Charly.
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More: Historically, Reflections on the Revolution in France became the founding philosophic opus of Conservatism when some predictions occurred: the Reign of Terror succeeded the execution of King Louis XVI and his wife, to purge anti-revolutionary enemies of the people. That, in turn, led to the political reaction of Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte's government, which appeared to some to be a military dictatorship. Burke had predicted the rise of a military dictatorship and that the revolutionary government instead of protecting the rights of the people would be corrupt and violent.
In the nineteenth century, positivist French historian Hippolyte Taine repeated the Englishman's arguments in Origins of Contemporary France (1876–1885): that centralisation of power is the essential fault of the Revolutionary French government system; that it does not promote democratic control; and that the Revolution transferred power from the divinely-chosen aristocracy to an "enlightened" heartless elite more incompetent and tyrannical than the aristocrats.
In the twentieth century, Western conservatives applied Burke's anti-revolutionary Reflections to popular socialist revolutions, thus establishing Burke's iconic political value to conservatives and classical liberals.
Of course, pinkos still idolize Robespierre. I'll stay with Burke.
Smelling out a rat: the atheistical-revolutionist disturbed in his midnight "calculations".
Ah, but Price was a friend of the mathematician and clergyman Thomas Bayes. He edited Bayes' most famous work "An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances" which contains Bayes' Theorem, one of the most fundamental theorems of probability theory, and arranged for its posthumous publication. Price wrote an introduction to Bayes' paper which provides some of the philosophical basis of Bayesian statistics.
Hmmmm... Does this mean AA sides with Price against Burke?
Lest you appear to be wandering in Straw Man City, could you identify those "pinkos" that idolize Robespierre, Tecs ?
Look, Charly -- the French Revolution was indisputably the founding event of the modern Left, and the Jacobins were the precursors of basically all leftist parties ever since. So, whether pinkos idolize or not Robespierre (the man is less important than the principle, no?), they do worship at the altar of the French Revolution, no doubt about that.
Here is a cogent essay on the theme, coming from an out-and-out pinko.
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