something about "The Great Debate" by Yuval Levin

Politics makes for especially caustic conversation in America these days. We discuss political polarization because we wonder if honest bipartisanship is dead and if we are headed for a point of no return. We sometimes seem violently rabid in our views; then we wonder if we have always been like this.

Whatever the case, Yuval Levin lays down some historical context for today's American Left-Right binary. Representing the founder of conservatism, Levin shows us Edmund Burke (1729-1797), widely credited as the founding philosophical Conservative. Levin briefly introduces the Dublin-born author, politician, and philosopher, then paraphrases Burke's political ideology, drawing largely from Burke's writings on the American and French Revolutions.

Representing the modern American Left is Thomas Paine (1737-1736). Steeped in both the American and French revolutions, the English-born Paine authored the (in)famous pamphlet "Common Sense," which, to many, inspired the rebels' declaration of independence from Britain in 1776. Levin paraphrases Paine, drawing from his American Revolution writings and his defense of the bloody French Revolution.

In The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, Levin devotes more time to Burke, largely using Paine to further refine an explanation of Burke's views. But Levin does not misrepresent Paine, exactly, so no real harm done. And Pain's shortchange comes as no suprise--Yuval Levin is a conservative intellectual born in Israel who founded National Affairs.

By the end of The Great Debate, Burke's and Paine's stances were so qualified, excepted, and nuanced as to be ripe for accusations of inconsistency and flip-flopping. Same old, same old.