ABSTRACT
As everyone knows, an enormous revival of interest in Edmund Burke has taken place during the past twenty years or so, the period, roughly, since the end of the Second World War. In his parliamentary career Burke had fought for the independence of Parliament against what he thought to be the unconstitutional influence of the Crown. Dramatically, Burke found himself separated from his former allies, who sympathized with the Revolution—and separated from them not only politically but personally, so far-reaching and decisive did the issues seem to him. Robert Merton and Leonard Broom, for example, have provided the theoretical framework for a sociology of anger which would be highly relevant to American society at the present time and which in a variety of ways confirms Burke's insights. Asserting against an actual society rights derived from a mythical state of nature, and celebrating a freedom equally mythical—"man is born free"—the theorists wielded a weapon to which any society would be vulnerable.
