Julian Burnside - a model of rationalist piety

Whenever the issue of human rights arises in the media and the issue is serious enough - like a charter or bill of rights - then the call goes out to one of Australia's great champions of human rights, human rights lawyer Julian Burnside. You know, the sort of lawyer Colin Firth played in Bridget Jones's Diary, coming to the rescue of a human rights activist all set to be kicked out of the country by "wantonly cruel and callously wicked" conservative politicians. Indeed, Burnside would have done a far more convincing job than Colin Firth whose performance simply lacked the required conviction of the pious rationalist.

There he was during this last week being interviewed about a Bill of Rights by Virginia Trioli on ABC's Breakfast program. He was indulgently forbearing in explaining the misapprehensions the lower class (in intelligence) has about a bill of rights. He took the occasion, once again, to give that fascist John Howard a scolding in unfailing rationalist arguments for his egregious human rights transgressions.

I must admit that in the great Julian's eyes I am (like John Howard) one of those vulgar conservatives who have no respect for his mode of legal reasoning. You see, I have been convinced by Edmund Burke's comprehensive debunking of the rationalist method in political reasoning. It's not only the rationalist method. It's the larger philosophical framework implicit in Burke's attack on legal and political theorists. (See The politics of imperfection).

Whenever Burnside's elegant person appears to give the nation the benefit of his great mind, he reminds me more than any of his fellow human rights advocates of Michael Oakeshott's essay 'Rationalism in Politics'. Burnside is a caricature of the rationalist in politics Oakeshott is describing.

**I have recently made comments on events in Holland

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com