Burke's comments on the contemporary French Revolution were important, however, they were confusing and mixed up with his fairly novel (at the time) concept of the importance of "property rights" to liberty. While brilliant, it is nonsense.

So is his defense of the English colonials in America based on their "antient" [his repeated word, which I think he made up?] rights as Englishmen. Just nonsense, but he just could never get himself to recognize that all people -- not just those of "the nobility"--are not only entitled to liberty but are collectively the source of all authority.

Wikipedia has done a great bio of him, and now I realize that "conservatives" have misled us in appropriating him as one of theirs. He is not. Not only did he almost get hung for his support of the American Revolution, but he also savaged the British East India Company and its "CEO". His peers thought him a "liberal". Lord Acton named him as one of the three great liberals -- see also Gladstone, Thos B Macaulay.

The Wiki article has quoted from his other work and in those he is genuinely eloquent. In addition, although it appears he began as a paid pigeon, he matured into an independent voice of genuine principle, with unequaled eloquence.

Of course, the effect of Burke's remonstrations against the most extreme forms of "Leftist" expressions was to embolden the Right. In effect, the British joined with the entire ancien regime in attacking the upstarts in France and went to a war. The war only forced the French people to defend themselves, which they did with unity and zeal they would not otherwise have exerted. The French managed to win the war in their "people's defense" against the entire "nobility" of Europe. But this of course, pushed them into the nasty little embrace of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Burke could not seem to focus on what the constitutes a "danger" to Liberty.