Right-Minded People Poem by gershon hepner

The term right-minded people mainly
denotes the people of the left
who think those on the right insanely
have been of reason quite bereft.

While those who are left-minded think
that they’re the people who are right,
the people in the middle sink,
and cannot put extremes to flight.

Some favor Marx, some favor Burke,
but both extremes are incorrect,
and though the middle men will irk
the left and right, they don’t defect,

as men who’re left and right may do,
by opposites attracted. They
remain well centered, though a few
start tilting, dangerously risqé.



Inspired by an article by Gertrude Himmelfarb in the February 9,2009 edition of The New Criterion, ‘Reflections on Burke’s “Reflections”’:
Edmund Burke was, and still is, a provocative thinker—a provocation in his own day, as in ours. At a time when most right-minded (which is to say, left-inclined) English literati were rhapsodizing over the French Revolution—Wordsworth declaring what “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”—Burke wrote his Reflections on the Revolution in France, a searing indictment of the Revolution. He was accused then, as he often is now, of being excessive, even hysterical, in his account of the Revolution:
a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices, … laws overturned, tribunals subverted, industry without vigor, commerce expiring … a church pillaged … civil and military anarchy … national bankruptcy.
All this, one must remember (it is sometimes hard to remember) , was said in November 1790, three years before the Reign of Terror, which Burke was so presciently describing.
While others were witnessing what they took to be a natural and much needed political revolution, the transformation of an absolute monarchy into a limited monarchy, Burke saw nothing less than a total revolution—a social, religious, and economic revolution as well as a political revolution. And beyond that, a cultural revolution, “a revolution, ” he said, “in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.” This was well before the momentous events: the abolition of the monarchy and establishment of the republic; the execution of the king and queen; the declaration of war against much of Europe (and England): the confiscation of the property of dissidents and emigrés; the imprisonment, expulsion, and assassination of more moderate (and not so moderate) revolutionaries; and, finally, the establishment of the Reign of Terror. Three years before Robespierre came to power, Burke took the measure of the man and his regime.

2/9/09