So Edmund Burke, then

burke is good again:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D56bh3cW0AAfgZU.jpg

So what you're saying is that Burke is an unheralded pioneer of conservative humor.

burke as proto-gyles brandreth

radio 4 aesthetic is older than i thought

Burke was very good at extracting the very essence of the political thought of his class and age and putting it into the rhetoric of moderate reason.

A country squire might say the poor are a bunch of ignorant rapscallions and when they try to push themselves forward to get more than their natural lot in life they should be kept in their place with a good horsewhipping whenever they get above themselves. But Burke would say something more along the lines of 'while the poor may have the honest virtues of their class, when lifted out of their element and cut off from the restraints of proper society, they easily become warped by passions they do not rightly know how to fulfill or to appease, and may swiftly become a mob without the guidance of either reason or morality, wrecking in haste what they know not how to fix at their leisure.'

It's the same paternalistic aristocratic claptrap, but phrased with elegance, reserve, and an Olympian perspective.

Description not criticism, right?

hes ham-burke