Burkean Veils: Now 50% more politic and well-wrought!

Wednesday, cigarette #1

Nicola treads on my turf by quoting Burke in reference to Sex Week at Yale:

All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature.

This is a nice quote, but it doesn't stand alone. (Sorry, but after McCain's rank abuse of Burke-quoting privileges, I'm especially sensitive to people taking him out of context.) I know I don't care that much about literal truth ("If you're not postmodern, you're not paying attention"), but Burke did. There are only a few kinds of decent draperies that he's okay with.

#1: The Politic, Well-Wrought Veil

They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights, which in the meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate; or which might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they had then settled for ever. They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too much resemble an election; and that an election would be utterly destructive of the “unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation,” which they thought to be considerations of some moment.

Even though the succession shenanigans of the Glorious Revolution were pretty unorthodox, Parliament did its best to make William and Mary's coronation look as ordinary as possible. Burke believed that an honest and thorough examination of the facts surrounding their coronation would lead to the conclusion that it had been as legitimate as any that had come before, but he also knew that honest and thorough examination is a rare thing, so Parliament was justified in fudging the facts of its narrative.

#2: The Sacred Veil

There is a sacred veil to be drawn over the beginnings of all governments. Ours in India had an origin like those which time has sanctified by obscurity. Time, in the origin of most governments, has thrown this mysterious veil over them; prudence and discretion make it necessary to throw something of the same drapery over more recent foundations.

The men who start countries are usually sketchy guys, so it's good that time and myth make them sound like heroes.

The "politic and well-wrought" veil is pragmatic; the "sacred veil" is aesthetic. The first makes something look like what it actually is; the second makes it look like something it's not. In the former case, honesty was preferable to dishonesty but the stability of the kingdom was preferable to either. In the latter case, dishonesty is, by its own merits, preferable to fact.

So which kind of veil is sexual modesty? I want to know where to send the funeral bouquet. Nicki has an answer:

Like a woman, life has her powders and paints to hide blemishes in public. With her lover she can be plain and still found beautiful, but no true gentleman would want the world to see his lover as he does. To be a conservative, I think, is to recognize the necessity of pleasant lies: not to mislead us, but to make us love before we understand.