[Askel5]

“was based upon the genius, not of one man, but of many: it was founded, not in one generation, but in a long period of several centuries and many ages of men. For, said he, there never has lived a man possessed of so great a genius that nothing could escape him, nor could the combined powers of all men living at one time possibly make all the necessary provisions for the future without the aid of actual experience and the test of time.”

Memory. Critical.

That's why I smart somewhat at choosing either between the Gallic (I'm read: "revolutionary") precepts and those of the Anglican (I read: "Reformation").

There's that same hulking black hole of anti-Catholicism where memory ought to be. Catholicism has never held itself out to be the "third way" between any pair of competing ideologies (socialism and capitalism), philosophies or faiths.

But without the Church's clarity and gift for reconciling not only the horizontal nature of man (as equal in dignity) but also the vertical nature of man (as individual and a part -- always -- of one hierarchy or another as patterned on the Family that is the basis of human society), it's absolutely true that quests for Mythic Liberty will necessarily end in either totalitarianism or anarchy as he says.

(Thanks for the post ... I'll keep reading.)

[KC Burke]

Re your #26 and the Catholic path....have you read Orestes Brownson? It is my understanding that his later work his helpful in resolving that path of showing a solid weld between the conservative tradition and RC. See the ISI book store for the right book of his, in his youth he wrote some off the wall stuff.