More than any other thinker, 18th Century British statesman Edmund Burke is credited with laying the intellectual foundations of modern conservatism. We cannot help but admire Burke’s towering intellectual achievements for liberty and order.
Burke was a practicing, professional politician virtually all of his adult life. In him we see a principled man who, during all his long career, took vigorous actions to promote his principles, a man who understood the proper relationship between ideas and actions, a man who stood by good causes even when it appeared those causes were losing.
In 1770 Burke wrote, “It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means to those ends, and to employ them with effect.”
In other words, you owe it to your philosophy, first, to study how to win and second, to take appropriate actions to win if you can. Edmund Burke did not tell us: “All that is necessary to triumph over evil is for men to have enough good ideas.” Quite the contrary, Burke’s most famous words are: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
In this final session, we return to the basic question of what defines a conservative. The answers to this question is supplied by one who has spent a lifetime thinking about and acting upon those principles. What is the real nature of conservative politics? Learn why your philosophy alone is not enough to win!
Morton Blackwell addresses students at the Leadership Institute
Presenter
Professionally, Morton Blackwell is the president of the Leadership Institute, a non-partisan educational foundation he founded in 1979.
His institute prepares conservatives for success in politics, government and the news media. Over the years the Leadership Institute has trained more than 138,000. students. It currently has revenue of $11.8 million per year and a staff of 60.
In youth politics, Mr. Blackwell was a College Republican state chairman and a Young Republican state chairman in Louisiana.
He served on the Young Republican National Committee for more than a dozen years, rising to the position of Young Republican National Federation national vice chairman at large.
Off and on for five years, 1965-1970, he worked as executive director of the College Republican National Committee under four consecutive College Republican national chairmen.
He served on the Louisiana Republican state central committee for eight years.
First elected to the Arlington County (Virginia) Republican Committee in 1972, he is a member of the Virginia Republican state central committee and was first elected in 1988 as Virginia’s Republican National Committeeman (RNC), a post he still holds. In 2004 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the RNC and served for four years.
Having worked actively in politics for more than forty years, he has probably trained more political activists than any other conservative. Starting in the 1960s, he has trained thousands of people who have served on staff for conservative and Republican candidates in every state.
Mr. Blackwell was Barry Goldwater’s youngest elected delegate to the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco.
He was a national convention Alternate Delegate for Ronald Reagan in 1968 and 1976, and a Ronald Reagan Delegate at the 1980 national convention.
In 1980, he organized and oversaw the national youth effort for Ronald Reagan.
He served as Special Assistant to the President on President Reagan’s White House Staff 1981-1984.
Mr. Blackwell is something of a specialist in matters relating to the rules of the Republican Party. He served on rules committees of the state Republican parties in Louisiana and in Virginia. He serves now on the RNC’s Standing Committee on Rules and has attended every meeting of the Republican National Conventions’ Rules Committees since 1972.
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