The Discipline of Confusion

     "A sullen gloom, and furious disorder, prevail by fits:  the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity, as it did in that season of fullness which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the First.  A species of men to whom a state of order would become a sentence of obscurity, are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances;  and it is no wonder that, by a sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the disorders which are the parents of all their consequence.  Superficial observers consider such persons as the cause of the public uneasiness, when, in truth, they are nothing more than the effect of it. . . .One mob is hired to destroy another;  a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the populace, and justly increases their discontent.  Men become pensioners of state on account of their abilities in the array of riot, and the discipline of confusion."  Edmund Burke Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents p.45