[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

This debate about who is and who is not a "Burkean" derives from discussions
George Will and Garry Wills had during the 1970s. Who is and who is not a
"conservative" - an older debate going back to Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter,
Peter Viereck, and Richard Hofstadter's hatchet job on the conservative
movement. Nothing original here, just the targets.

[Pelham]

Garry Wills of course went Left. And George Will went milquetoast. Were Russell Kirk still alive he would likely be denounced as an evil Paleo by the opportunists who have stolen and abused the conservative mantle in recent years.

[stripes1776]

This debate about who is and who is not a "Burkean" derives from discussions George Will and Garry Wills had during the 1970s. Who is and who is not a "conservative" - an older debate going back to Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter, Peter Viereck, and Richard Hofstadter's hatchet job on the conservative movement. Nothing original here, just the targets.

I am afraid that George Will is the only person I know about from your list. But what is a conservative is a question worthy of debate.

I have not read a great deal of Burke, but what I have read I like very much. Most of what I have read is his criticism of the French Revolution and the morality of Rousseau that the revolutionaries supported. Rousseau's morality proposed a generalized concern for humanity in the abstract as a substitute for the hard work of self-control and duty. Egotism would replace humility as the primary virtue. It seems to me this is still a valid way to see the difference between left-wingers and conservatives. (I avoid the word liberal because the political left is not liberal. Burke was a liberal English gentleman, liberal in the sense of taking a wide and liberal compass on life in order to think about a great many things.)