Dear Prudence

I suppose you know you're an old guy (and a conservative one) when you're excited to read about the virtue of prudence. But that's me. There's a perfectly scintillating article on the subject in Law and Liberty, called The First Virtue of Old Whigs: Prudence Burke and Lincoln. The article is a review of George Weiner's new book. And it is all very much in cinque with George Will's tome (yes, I'm still reading it) The Conservative Sensibility.

I am reading all this in a particularly imprudent time. This is no less true in our politics than in other facets of our culture. Prudence is skeptical of power, but our politics is a venue for power-seekers who are not the least bit concerned for maintaining the principles of Federalist 51 ("Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."). I wonder what Burke would do in a time like this.

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John Quincy Adams was certainly a prudent fellow. I cane across this quote in Will's book, and it is worthy of frequent repetition:

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

You can read the whole speech here.