In many of the fifty states, there is a general principle which states that city streets have a speed limit of 25 miles per hour, and country roads have a limit of 55 miles per hour. These two clear and simple axioms would seem to generate a decision procedure for most, if not all, thoroughfares.
Yet, in practice, one will encounter posted speed limits of all kinds of arbitrary numbers — limits other than 25 or 55 MPH. One commonly sees posted limits in multiples of five — 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 MPH — and occasionally numbers like 8 or 12 MPH.
Sometimes speed limits in cities will exceed the usual 25 MPH, and countryside limits will sometimes be below the standard 55 MPH. Freeways will have limits of 70 or 75 MPH, and sometimes even higher numbers.
The thought of Edmund Burke is often best understood in the context of the French Revolution and his commentary on it.
The style of political ideology which energized the French Revolution would embrace the axiomatic system of 25 MPH for city streets and 55 MPH for country roads absolutely and simplistically. There would be no other speed limits considered. Every street in the nation would be either 25 or 55 MPH, and the choice between the two would be based upon whether the thoroughfare was urban or rural. No other variation would be allowed or even contemplated.
By contrast, Burke would survey the situation as it is, with not only posted limits of 25 MPH and 55 MPH, but also with posted limits of all kinds of other numbers, and he would consider whether there was some reason for all these different numbers. Burke would proceed on the assumption that there is a reason why things are the way they are. If a local town council chose to post a limit other than 25 or 55 MPH, then it would be prudent to inquire as to why and how the council arrived at the decision to post the number it did.
Here the reader may imagine all kinds of scenarios: some streets in the town have few residents and few intersecting streets, and so a limit of 30 MPH seemed safe; other streets have thick traffic, many residential structures and many intersecting roads along their paths, and so a limit of 20 MPH seemed wise. In the countryside, perhaps a particular road was winding and tended to accumulate ice in cold weather, and so a lower limit of 50 MPH seemed appropriate.
Burke might suggest that decades of experience informed legislations prescribing all manner of speed limits other than 25 and 55 MPH. He would not argue that such laws are sacrosanct and can never be questioned. On the contrary, he would encourage such questioning, and encourage the questioner to consider the answers carefully.
There is a reason why things are the way they are.
There are reasons why societies and cultures have arrived at the patterns which they have. It is possible to contemplate adjustments to convention, but it is wise to do so only after carefully weighing the generations of experience which have brought society to those conventions.
The apparent patchwork of varying speed limits may appear to be illogical and haphazard. A system which assigned every road and street to either 25 MPH or 55 MPH might seem more rational and axiomatic. But the patchwork system is the accreted wisdom of decades. Successive city councils will have encountered varying events and circumstances, and will have adjusted legislations accordingly.
It is impudent to arrive lately to the question and presume to impose a rationalized system upon a complex state of affairs.
Simplistic and absolute patterns, imposed arbitrarily in the name of being imposed rationally, lead more often to problems than to resolutions.
This is one of the major tenets of Burke’s thought.
Edmund Burke’s plea is for the would-be revolutionary to consider that the system which he desires to destroy is, while not perfect, still the accumulation and coalescence of decades and generations of experience — of people encountering a wide range of conditions and events, of people having already seen the results of a variety of responses to those conditions and events, and having learned the results and having chosen carefully from among them.
Complex systems are the result of a history of varying experiences — and of people having made varying decisions in response to those experiences — and a massive catalog of such experiences and the sundry responses to them constitutes a nuanced reality which in turn informs legislations. Burke does not argue for the permanence of societal standards, but rather he argues for a nuanced examination of the existing norms before any alteration is suggested — and such proposed alterations are better when they are slight and not radical.
