Pre-Modern Politics

I’m sitting in on classes of the new faculty members here at Patrick Henry College to see how they are doing. Here are some things I picked up from Dr. Stephen Baskerville’s class “Freedom’s Foundations I,” a core “Great Books” course. The class was reading Edmund Burke, hailed as the father of modern conservatism. I learned that there really was no “conservative/liberal” distinction before the modern era, specifically, before the French Revolution. Also that in the modern era, political writings have to do with the exercise of power. Before that, political writings were always about the exercise of justice.