Edmund Burke and the Principle of Order

What Matthew Arnold called “an epoch of concentration” seems to be impending over the English-speaking world. The revolutionary impulses and the social enthusiasms which have dominated this era since their great explosion in Russia are now confronted with a countervailing physical and intellectual force. Communism, Fascism, and their kindred expansive ideologies all in their fashion were manifestations of a common rebellion against the prevalent moral order. To resist them, rather gropingly and grumpily, the English and American traditions of mind and society have been aroused, quite as they stirred against French innovating fury after 1790. We appear to be entering a time of revaluation and reconstruction; we begin to discern, perhaps, the outlines of a resurrected conservatism in philosophy and politics and letters.

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