Edmund Burke Denounces George F. Will
Edmund Burke does not approve of such a rash and ill-founded abandonment of the traditions of California and the United States as is advocated by a George Will who cannot think of anything intelligent to write about. It is denim--not the bow tie and the silk shirt so beloved by George F. Will--that is the fabric of our society here in America. We dress as lumberjacks and gold miners because we remember and to remind us that it was lumberjacks and gold miners--not effete swells--who built this country.
Edmund Burke:
Edmund Burke: [O]e of the first and most leading principles... is, lest the temporary possessors and life-renters... unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors or of what is due to their posterity should act as if they were the entire masters, that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail or commit waste on the inheritance by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society [i.e., denim].... By this unprincipled facility of changing... in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken.... Barbarism with regard to science and literature, unskilfulness with regard to arts and manufactures, would infallibly succeed to the want of a steady education and settled principle; and thus the commonwealth itself would, in a few generations, crumble away, be disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality, and at length dispersed to all the winds of heaven.
To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated... that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution, that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion.... By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations they may regenerate the paternal constitution and renovate their father's life...
