One of the biggest mistakes that the radicals of the french revolution make is that they believe if only they find the right rules they could just start everything over from scratch your burke says well never know enough to build a whole society directly. What we can do is see what works in the society we have and try to make the rest more like that. Essentially the process of social progress is the process of making society more like its best self. Its a gradual process, a grateful process that tries to be impressed by whats working rather than outrage at what isnt. A kind of conservative process that tries to say the best we can serve as a model for the rest. Host one of the things i didnt remember or know, i have not read burke until late, and the phrase little platoon which is bandied around a lot particularly in computer circles as shorthand for the institutions of civil society, meeting mediating structure that can between the individual and the state. Robert putnam at harvard ha