Brian Schutt

"Burke was a great writer, a profound thinker, and a high-ranking political practitioner, with a keen sense both of the damage done by the wrong ideas, and the real need for the right ones. Political wisdom, Burke argued, is not contained in a single head. It does not reside in the plans and schemes of the political class, and can never be reduced to a system. It resides in the social organism as a whole, in the myriad small compromises, in the local negotiations and trusts, through which people adjust to the presence of their neighbours and co-operate in safeguarding what they share. People must be free to associate, to form 'little platoons', to dispose of their labour, their property, and their affections, according to their own desires and needs." From a May 2013 Guardian article entitled Identity, family, marriage: our core conservative values have been betrayed theguardian.com/commentisfre…