From the book The Orientalist, by Tom Reiss.
Lev concludes his indictment of the Soviet secret police by recalling Edmund Burke‘s indictment, in Parliament, of Warren Hastings, the governor-general of India. Hastings had been impeached on a charge of oppressing the natives, and argued in his own defense that his actions could not be considered illegal because he had been granted arbitrary power in India.
To this the British conservative and hater of revolutionary injustice – but also of all kinds of injustice, whether revolutionary or not – replied:
“My lords, the East India company have not arbitrary power to give him; the King has no arbitrary power to give him; your Lordships have not; nor the Commons; nor the whole legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any man can give…
Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal.”
raincoaster 
This has diddly to do with Burke – Bridgehead in Ottawa has a supply of Ethopian Yirgacheffe – would you like me to to secure some for you? Or Cathy B probably could.
Even as an American, I can appreciate Burke for his views on social and political revolution and its usefulness as long as the revolution is forced to return to the social contract.
Or, for those youngsters out there who ever watched “Hunt for Red October,” Sean Connery’s sentiment at the end that “a little revolution is a good thing.”
Yes, please! Whatever our position on human rights, we are always in favour of Yergacheffe!
I need to read more Burke. Whatever I got in high school has long since drained out of my brains. And I’m always getting Crimson Tide confused with The Hunt for Red October.
The Marchioness
Your Grace
Wer ist Yergachaffe ?
Le Contrat social – never happened – rhubarb !!
Man is born free but everywhere women are doing the washing up
Your obedient servant etc
GE
Yergacheffe is one of the finest and rarest coffees in the world. When you get a chance to drink Ethiopian coffee, do it. Harrar, Yergacheffe, Sidamo, whatever, it’s all of incredible quality. I only hope this has been roasted properly and is nice and fresh. Can’t get it around these parts very often.
I’m certainly doing no washing up. Isn’t that why God invented napkins and made sinks the right height to stand over while snarfing things out of the fridge?
Ah, but M. Eagle, there were brief flowerings of the contract as during the early days of the Roman republic.
I’m afraid that, despite the best efforts of T. Jefferson, T. Paine and others however, the social contract in America was always destined to be nothing more than a stock option.
The Marchioness of WithHampton under Buzzard
Your Grace
I thought it was the Good Lord who inspired Americans to invent the Dish-Washer and to spread its benefits throughout the World so that neither Men nor Women would have to to the Washing-Up, except of course when in severe weather the Electicity fails & the Water freezes
Kapitlaism does afford some benefits
According to the BBC News Science Page today (Mittwoch) :
“When scientists analysed the DNA of the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, they found that his Y chromosome belonged to a haplogroup known as K2.
“Jefferson’s father claimed Welsh ancestry. But his Y-haplogroup is vanishingly rare in Europe and has not yet been reported in Britain.
“In fact, genetic studies show that Thomas Jefferson’s K2 haplogroup ultimately came from north-east Africa or the Middle East, the areas where it is most commonly found today. ”
Now who would have imagined that !!!
Your obedient servant etc
and Tot siens
G E
Funny, he doesn’t LOOK K2 haplogroupian.
You could always pull down his genes and check, I suppose
And you thought it was all on Sally Hemming’s side.
I wonder though, will University of Virginia now start giving out black sheepskins?
Having a more-than-passing familiarity with the UVa crowd (I graduated from their only separate college), they’ll probably try to claim that the gene sample was contaminated.
Toffee-nosed bahstahds.
Or maybe all their fraternities will just apply for NAACP/UNCF accreditation and stop feeling guilty about shaking their booties to rap?
Wait till they really narrow it down and find out his ancestors were Iraqi!