At the conclusion of his article, Rothbard asks: “If the work were really a satire, why only proclaim it as such when a rising political career was at stake? Why not announce it shortly after publication?”

There is a simple answer to Rothbard’s questions: Burke did in fact announce the satirical intent of the Vindication shortly after its initial publication in 1756. The second edition with the new preface was actually published in 1757, just one year after the original edition–not nine years later, in 1765, as Rothbard asserted. And in 1757 Burke was not running for any political office.

It is quite possible that Rothbard got the incorrect year from John Morley’s biography, Burke (2nd ed., 1888, p. 19). Although Morley, a classical liberal historian who was usually reliable, understood that Burke wrote the Vindication as satire, he mistakenly gave the year of the new preface as 1765: “It is significant that in 1765, when Burke saw his chance of a seat in Parliament, he thought it worthwhile to print a second edition of his Vindication, with a preface to assure his readers that the design of it was ironical.”

I should note, with some embarrassment, that I also got the year of the second edition wrong in my recent book, The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism. Relying on Morley’s account, as Rothbard probably did, I gave 1765 as the year of the new preface, though I have never believed that Burke intended the Vindication as anything other than satire. My mistake was curious in a way, since I had previously read the correct account by Peter J. Stanlis (Edmund Burke and the Natural Law, 1958, p. 126) and had even bracketed his correction of Morley; nevertheless, I somehow allowed the correct year to disappear into the recesses of my mind.

The notion that a young Burke, within a year after publishing the Vindication, converted from a hyper‐​rationalistic anarchist (and anti‐​Christian deist) to an anti‐​rationalistic conservative (and devout Anglican), while attempting to disguise his conversion with a deceitful preface, is, in a word, preposterous. There is not a scintilla of credible evidence to support this interpretation. The real point of the Vindication, as Burke explains in his Preface, was to show that “the same Engines which were employed for the Destruction of Religion, might be employed with equal Success for the Subversion of Government.” Years earlier, in 1726, Bishop Butler had taken a similar approach in his Analogy of Religion, which maintained that the same arguments used by deists against Christianity could, with equal force, be turned against deism itself. Thus the logical terminus of such rationalistic arguments, according to Butler, is atheism, which the deists vehemently opposed–just as they would never embrace the anarchistic conclusions in Burke’s Vindication, however logically compelling they might be. This type of reductio argument was very effective during a time when both atheism and anarchism were regarded by the vast majority of readers as absurd on their face.

The Vindication, when understood as the satire that Burke intended, clearly embodies a number of fundamental themes that Burke later elaborated upon in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and other writings. One of these themes is Burke’s disdain for rationalistic intellectuals who believe that their abstract theories may reasonably be applied to the real world of politics. In his explanatory Preface to the Vindication, Burke ridicules those thinkers who dwell in the “Fairy Land of Philosophy.” Such intellectuals, uncomfortable with the uncertainty and compromise that are part of life, seek refuge in simplistic theories. These intellectuals, rather than exert the difficult and “sober” labor demanded by practical reasoning, which must take “a great variety of considerations” into account, are instead “charmed and captivated” by abstract theories that dazzle their imaginations with “ingenious falsehoods.” Although such theories have an “air of plausibility” that appeals to people with limited intelligence or who are outright lazy, they are grossly inadequate when we attempt to apply them to complicated social and political problems.

Let us now turn to Burke’s more extensive comments about abstract theories and rationalistic intellectuals in Reflections on the Revolution in France. I shall explain Burke’s criticisms apart from his particular objections to the French Revolution. I do this because Burke’s arguments, generally considered, frequently have been resurrected and used by modern conservatives and neoconservatives against libertarians who defend a theory of natural rights. And this is the relevance of Burke for the modern libertarian movement.

Defenders of abstract rights, according to Burke, contemptuously repudiate traditions and conventions that do not conform to their notion of justice.