EBC meeting Friday 4 September

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A reminder that the next meeting of Edmund Burke’s Club is on Friday evening 4 September at the Savage Club.

The topic for discussion is ‘Burke and the German Conservative Tradition’. The reference is Chapter 3 ‘The German Conservative Tradition: Romanticism and Power’ in Noel O’Sullivan’s Conservatism. Another handy reference is chapters 12 & 14 on Hegel in Roger Scrution’s A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein.

In following meetings the works of other philosophers considered conservative will come up for discussion. Among those are Michael Oakeshott (especially in his essays in Rationalism in Politics) and Roger Scruton.

In recent weeks the charge that the ABC’s (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) journalists are on the political left (some far left) has been vigorously refuted by the ABC – to the utter bemusement of conservatives. For conservatives to deal adequately with ABC journalists’ preposterous denial they must know what it means to think like a conservative and what it means to think like a leftist (of the different sorts). What does philosophical conservatism entail? What are the key assumptions of a leftist philosophy?

Labor goes to the gutters

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In the Godfather series going to the mattresses means going to war. When the Labor Party goes to war they go to the gutters – to filth beyond the inclination of the normal person. We have seen the foremost filth-throwers many times in action:

Gutless Jason Clare

Wife-deserter and disgusting hypocrite Tony Burke

Smarmy sanctimonious Mark Dreyfus

Loudmouth bully Stephen Conroy

These lying filth-throwers see no boundaries to what they are prepared to say – no boundaries except their gutlessness.

Former High Court Judge Dyson Heydon has an unimpeachable character and reputation. Indeed, the attainment of the position of High Court Judge presumes an unsullied character and a legal mind of the highest order. Commissioner Heydon was invited to give this year’s Sir Garfield Barwick Address to a group of Liberal Party Lawyers.

The Sir Garfield Barwick Address is not at the level of the stinking atmosphere of sweat, booze and moronic grunting of a CFMEU pub where CFMEU leaders boast about calling a low-level government official a ‘piece of shit’ for merely doing his job.

Only those with the finest legal minds are invited to give the Sir Garfield Barwick address and the audience expects nothing less than intellectual refinement, legal nuance and erudition. The overriding priority is the character and intellectual status of the speaker and the content of the address. Bland political partiality has no place if the speaker wants to be taken seriously.

Whether or not the occasion is called a fundraiser is beside the point and necessarily infers nothing about the political allegiances of the speaker or his character. Questions of character and intellectual status have already been settled – empirically. That’s why Commissioner Heydon was invited to give the address.

For members of parliament who are trained lawyers and have served or are serving as Australia’s alternative Justice Minister to call a High Court Judge a ‘stooge’ and a ‘bagman’ and totally unfit to conduct a royal commission is an outrage that must not be borne – if Australian government is to maintain a semblance of moral and administrative competence.

For the same reasons, Commissioner Heydon was appointed to the High Court, asked to give the Sir Garfield Barwick Address, and to head the Royal Commission into Unions – unimpeachable integrity and the finest of legal minds. Any government of whatever colour needs people like Commissioner Heydon.

In trashing Dyson Heydon Labor’s gutless creeps are trashing Australia’s system of government. They are trashing you and me.

Of course, there is a background to the cowardly attacks that plumb depths of hypocrisy unattainable by the ordinary person. Andrew Bolt could not give a better explanation of what’s at stake for the Labor Party HERE.

Gerard Wilson

Defending the only form of marriage

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INVITATION from Terri M. Kelleher, Victorian President,  Australian Family Association

You are cordially invited to hear brilliant young U.S. author, and scholar Ryan T Anderson, PhD present the strongest defence of marriage as the union of a man and a woman as you will be likely to hear. Dr Anderson is on a one-week tour of Australia organised by the Australian Christian Lobby. (Click here to view flyer)

TOPIC:   THE COST OF EQUALITY – What comes next with same-sex marriage may not be what you think. (Includes Q & A)

VENUE: Cathedral Hall, Australian Catholic University, 20 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy

DATE:    Thursday, 20th August 

TIME:      6pm

Bookings: Tickets must be purchased online: click here to BOOK NOW

 Ryan Anderson has been described as the most compelling and courageous defender of marriage in the U.S. He is the author of numerous papers and books on marriage. His latest book, Truth Overruled – The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, has just been released. Ryan was thrust into fame in America when he appeared on the Piers Morgan Live TV show with this well-reasoned defence of marriage before a hostile audience – click here to view.

Ryan Anderson’s address will make clear the emerging concern that legislating same-sex marriage will cost us our freedom, that it would not mean equality for the wider Australian community.

 

The sheer callousness of the death camps – we thought it could never happen again

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Perhaps the pictures most seared into my mind are the photos of the Nazi extermination camps that I was confronted with as a kid in the 1950s. Children were not supposed to see them, but they were there in one way or another. The piles of skeletal starved carcases on carts and the rotting carcases scattered around merging with the muddy soil – it was unimaginably grotesque and macabre.

Few could conceive that one human being could do such do such things to another human being. The inmates of the death camps clearly meant nothing to the ideologically sick Nazis. We thought it impossible that such evil would prevail in our Western Civilization. We were convinced that our authorities would do everything possible to prevent a repetition of such bestial behaviour.

Gerard Wilson

Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts

Second Planned Parenthood Senior Executive Haggles Over Baby Parts Prices, Changes Abortion Methods

Obamacare Planned Parenthood abortion fetal organ harvesting selling body parts for research

Enjoying the unique surroundings of the Melbourne Savage Club

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According to the Melbourne Savage Club’s website, it ‘is one of Australia’s oldest and most atmospheric private members clubs.’ It was established in 1894 and occupies ‘an historic 19th century mansion right in the heart of Melbourne.’ It takes its name from ‘Richard Savage, a free-spirited 17th century English poet.’ Those who have been there will surely come under the spell of surroundings that breathe a rich artistic past.

It is a great privilege granted to Edmund Burke’s Club to be allowed to hold its meetings there and organize such pleasurable occasions as the dinner to commemorate the anniversaries of Magna Carta and the Battle of Waterloo. It is Fr Glen Tattersall’s membership of the Savage that makes all this possible. Gerard Wilson,the President of EBC, would like to convey his warm thanks to Fr Tattersall on behalf of the EBC membership for his generosity.

 

Prime Minister Abbott’s 2015 Magna Carta lecture, Parliament House, Canberra

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Often, it is in retrospect that particular events assume their greatest importance.

When the English barons gathered at Runnymede to parley with King John, they weren’t thinking of history; they were thinking of themselves.

They weren’t conscious of universal rights; they were conscious of their own grievances.

For the most part, the Magna Carta reads like a log of claims against the king.

Merely to make such claims, though, reveals a clear understanding that the king can’t do what he likes, and that a subject has rights even against a sovereign.

Even in the 13th century, this was not a novel concept.

Even then, the king’s coronation oath typically included a promise to govern according to law.

It wasn’t long, though, before the Magna Carta came to be seen as a constitutional watershed binding all future kings. Continue reading →

Magna Carta and Waterloo dinner

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The dinner at the Savage Club to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta on the 15th of June 1215 and the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo on the 18th of June 1815 was a huge success and thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended. There was a full program of toasts, readings, and discussions which resulted in the evening passing too quickly.

Edmund Burke’s Club president, Gerard Wilson, welcomed the guests in the lounge. He explained that the connection between the Battle of Waterloo and Edmund Burke was Burke’s stunning prophecy in 1790 that a military leader in France would take control of the army and become master of revolutionary France. Napoleon mounted a successful coup in 1799.  He read the passage from Burke’s Reflections of the Revolution in France where Burke was discussing the rising indiscipline among the army ranks.

In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full off action until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things. But the moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master — the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your Assembly, the master of your whole republic.

That master was of course Napoleon. Gerard Wilson spoke briefly about Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, leader of the forces that faced and overcame Napoleon in that critical battle outside the Belgian town of Waterloo. He highlighted Wellington’s prime ministership in 1828-30 and in 1834 and his lasting fame as a military commander. Significant is that Prime Minister Wellington oversaw the passage of the Catholic Relief Act in 1829 which was to have an influence on Governor Richard Bourke’s administration in the Australian colony. Indeed, the Catholic leadership in the colony regarded the passing of the Church Act in 1836 as the ‘Magna Carta of their religious liberty’.

Gerard Wilson remarked that most boys in the 1950s counted the Duke of Wellington and Horatio Nelson (Battle of Trafalgar) among their heroes, making no distinction between them and their Australian-bred heroes. This, he said, was a demonstration of the unbroken lines of cultural continuity at that time. He then proposed a toast to the Duke of Wellington and his victory over Napoleon, pointing out that the Waterloo battle resulted not only in a military victory. More importantly, it was a victory for Britain’s social and political system of which the British Commonwealth would be the beneficiary.

The attendees then removed to the private dining room upstairs for dinner which included ‘Beef Wellington’ as the main course. The first reading took place after the entrée. Passages were read from Burke’s account of the events leading up to the sealing of Magna Carta followed by a toast to Simon Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the real behind-the-scenes organizer of the document. The second reading during dessert was from the Reflections on the place of Magna Carta in the British Constitution. To end the formalities, Fr Glen Tattersall declaimed Lord Byron’s poem the ‘Eve of Waterloo’ (below). Attendees returned to the lounge for after-dinner drinks which put a seal on the pleasantest of evenings.

Special thanks are due to Fr Glen Tattersall for making the Savage Club available to Edmund Burke’s Club for their meetings and occasions such as the Magna Carta/Waterloo dinner. It is Fr Tattersall’s membership of the Savage Club that allows EBC to enjoy such unique surroundings.

THE EVE OF WATERLOO
by: Lord Byron (1788-1824)

HERE was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Did ye not hear it? — No; ’twas but the wind,
Or the car rattling o’er the stony street;
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when youth and pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
But hark! — that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before;
Arm! arm! it is — it is — the cannon’s opening roar!

Within a windowed niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick’s fated chieftain; he did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with death’s prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deemed it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well
Which stretched his father on a bloody bier,
And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell;
He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.

Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro,
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress,
And cheeks all pale, which, but an hour ago,
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness.
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs
Which ne’er might be repeated; who would guess
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes,
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise!

And there was mounting in hot haste; the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder, peal on peal afar;
And near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;
While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,
Or whispering, with white lips — “The foe! they come! they come!”

Text of the two readings will follow in separate blogs. Photos of the evening are in the Gallery.

Ten principles of freedom

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by Professor David Flint AM

National Observer Australia’s independent current affairs online journal No. 83 (June – August 2010).

To be free, and to enjoy that freedom, man must live in an ordered society. We cannot live in a state of anarchy or a state of nature where, as Hobbes famously put it, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.[1]

An ordered liberal society allows mankind to lead a full life. This was recognised eloquently by the Founding Fathers of the United States when, believing that their rights as Englishmen were being denied, they declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”[2] Continue reading →

Ireland – a famous political victory and a devastating cultural defeat

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By voting in a landslide to change the definition of marriage, Ireland has shown on the great feast of Pentecost that it has flipped over into its pagan past. The cultural signs and symbols might still be there, but it’s superficial. Ireland can no longer be considered a Catholic nation. Indeed, it would be struggling to call itself Christian.

The most important part of Irish culture, its Catholic religion, has been spurned. The religion the Irish desperately clung to for centuries under a heartless persecution that reduced two-thirds of the Irish population to a little more than miserable degraded serfs in their own country has been spurned. Continue reading →

Waterloo and Burke’s stunning prophecy

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Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) dismayed many of his Whig colleagues and infuriated his enemies, both of whom imagined the revolution ushering a glorious era of freedom. Burke’s masterpiece nerved the pen of Thomas Paine into a fury of scribbling to produce one of the most overrated works of political philosophy – The Rights of Man – taking Hobbes’s idea of the state of nature to its logical absurdity. Burke’s analyses of the Revolution’s action and theory contained a number of prophecies which in time proved accurate. The most extraordinary for its prescience and accuracy was the following:

In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full off action until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things. But the moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master — the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your Assembly, the master of your whole republic.
(Reflections, p. 342 Penguin Edition)

That man Burke foresaw was Napoleon. Napoleon mounted a coup in 1799 and with his French army attempted to take the revolution to the whole of Europe. The Duke of Wellington eventually stopped him at Waterloo. The revolution/Napoleon paradigm of social degeneration to dictatorship would repeat itself through the next two hundred years without its lesson sufficiently penetrating the consciousness of the people of Western Civilization.

wellington
Wellington greets his troops after the battle

The following links for a history of the Battle of Waterloo:

The Day that Decided Europe’s Fate

The Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo

Eyewitness to Waterloo

NOTICE
Edmund Burke’s Club is organizing a dinner to commemorate Magna Carta and the Battle of Waterloo at the Savage Club Melbourne for 16 June 2015. More details and the program HERE.