Status Updates From The Works of the Right Hono...

A Vindication of Natural Society: Burke sells this wonderful essay as a satire, but it's well worth reading as a serious piece of early anarchist thought. The specific examples he uses (Spanish America, *of course*) aren't always so sophisticated but it's easy to fill in the blanks. If there's any irony here, it's that you can convincingly shut down anarchism in the same way. A bitter kind of irony.

Someone really needs to write a blow-by-blow of Edmund Burke in concise modern English. But maybe there's no demand on this front considering how irrelevant classical conservatism has become.

Every profession, not excepting the glorious one of soldier, or the sacred one of a priest, is libel to its own particular vices.

Once again he manages to speak well beyond his own time and beyond my cursory interest in his political battles in that time. I've always been intrigued how people's individualism guides the profession they choose, and then how that profession impacts them in positive and negative ways.

I can never prevail on myself to make complaints which have no cause in order to raise hopes which have no foundation.

Actually, if I could, by the grace of God, prevail upon myself to STOP doing that, I would make the job of the enemy of my soul a lot more difficult. See Philippians 4.

There is in mankind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their views, and their works the measure of excellence in everything whatsoever.

My only comment would be that this is so typical of the human condition through the centuries that no comment is necessary.

People are not liable to be mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently wrong in the names they give them and in their reasonings about them.

Couldn't have said it better if he counseled for a living instead of diagnosing the body politic.

"… a lively interest in the affairs of his country…"

What a lovely legacy to be left to one's admirers!