Guest Poster Bio: The Prudential Liberal

A Twitter user stumbled upon my blog (my blog posts are automatically tweeted on my Twitter accont) and discovered that some of the things I’ve said resonate with ideas he’d developed independently. He sent a couple write-ups of his ideas to me.  I liked them so much I asked if it would be OK if I post them on my blog.  He graciously agreed.

He calls himself “The Prudential Liberal” (I LOVE that name!), and sent along this brief bio for me to post to introduce him to my readers:

Burke defined the politician as “the philosopher in action.” As a philosopher, the politician should adhere to moral natural law (in my case my moral foundations – Liberal); as a man of action, he ought to be guided by prudence in practical affairs. Burke regarded prudence in all things a virtue, but in politics it was the first of virtues. Prudence provides the practical means by which moral natural law and constitutional law are fulfilled in the various concrete circumstances of man’s life in society. Prudence, which made politics an art, not a science, taught statesmen that “the situation of man is the preceptor of his duty.” This meant that “a statesman, never losing sight of principles, is to be guided by circumstances; and judging contrary to the exigencies of the moment he may ruin his country forever.

In an American context, I now see myself as a centrist, economically liberal and socially conservative. My Elephant leans decidedly towards Democrat, but my Rider would be a Republican. The two get on ok most of the time 🙂 because the Republicans, since Reagan, Have travelled so far to the right that they are almost out of sight of the rider, and except for the plague of political correctness and the rigidity of thought on the left, the environment for my Elephant isn’t too bad. I don’t particularly like rigid thought structure though, because once you have fixed yourself to a particular rationale flexibility of thought becomes very difficult. And, I believe, politically, we should all have some flexibility within our moral natural law, because I don’t believe that either side, even the extremes, is necessarily right or wrong, it depends on the context… we should be “guided by circumstances.”