The Moral High Ground of Pain

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When I read their views side by side on various issues, I can't help but feel often that pain holds the moral high ground and really exalts in it. Part of his rhetorical effectiveness strikes me as coming from the fact that he sees himself as the morally superior of the two positions. Burke's response to that is basically that morality is not as simple as it seems. And so we need to make sure we're on the right side.

Yuval Levin, author of The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas of Burke and Paine and their influence on the evolution of political philosophy. Levin outlines the differing approaches of the two thinkers to liberty, authority, and how reform and change should take place. Other topics discussed include Hayek's view of tradition, Cartesian rationalism, the moral high ground in politics, and how the "right and left" division of American politics finds its roots in the debates of these thinkers from the 1700s.