Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke (1790)

This spring I have been reading books on change and government since the Age of Enlightenment.  The thing that has been most surprising to me is that the work that speaks most to me is this one by Edmund Burke.  He is thought of as the father of modern conservatism, which is not exactly a line of politics that is entirely up my alley.  But it turns out that a conservative in Burke's time was really more of a moderate in todays' terms.  Today conservatives seem to want to go back to a previous time.  Burke felt that change was important, but that it had to be done within the context of the existing regime.

He wrote in the late 18th century, which was a time of revoultion.  He was an early supporter of the American Revolution--he felt that the English form or government was failing the colonies and that the proposed changes were well within the context of the way things had been done.  The American colonies had an extensive form of local government prior to declaring their independence, and what they were proposing was that they continue their existing government but that they be treated more fairly.

The French Revolution was another story altogether.  They were proposing a change of government that had no footing within what existed.  They were advocating something that was entirely theoretical rather than something that they knew.  He felt that a change in goverment had to be more gradual, that people did not do well with big change, things that they couldn't understand.  It turns out he was quite right about the French--the revolution devolved into complete chaos, and France, after lots of death and destruction, they ended up pretty much where they started, with what was a dictatorship rather than democrasy.  His ideas have a lot of revelance for us today--how to keep the government in line with what is fair and what is acceptable and the way for the two to meet.