Compare And Contrast Burke And Thomas Paine

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Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine were both influential figures in writing and thinking, and as such, were aware that political action was pointed at by political ideas (Levin). Despite similar upbringings that led to their reasoning for political positions, these two men’s views of political action and change differed greatly. Burke desired to implement a slow reform, and Paine believed that an illegitimate government can be fixed only by a reset, returning to a new beginning and starting fresh (Levin).

Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine’s reasonings for their positions compared in their backgrounds and upbringing. Both Burke and Paine were the prodigy of religiously-intertwined parents, Burke’s father and Paine’s mother were Anglican, while Burke’s mother was Catholic and Paine’s father was a Quaker (Brown). Burke was led to believe that society was more than the sum of its parts, author Yuval Levin writes, and he believed in the recognition of everyone as a human being. Paine, on the other hand, was said by Levin to have a strong sense of outrage against the abuse of power by the strong over the weak, and believed that morality aimed to protect against this injustice. …show more content…

Paine was a much more vocal advocate of this, whereas Burke tended to keep this opinion fairly quiet (Levin). Burke never denied the faults of the French government nor denied that reform was necessary to restore order, in conjunction with Paine’s opinion. However, the two differed in their ideas as to how to come about this reform, Burke believing in reform, and Paine believing in a complete uprooting of the current system

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