REDEFINING SOVEREIGNTY:

The limit of Burke's respect for French sovereignty was his conviction that national change of such an abrupt and capacious character could not be confined to its place of origin. Perfectionist ideologies - from 18th-century rationalist French revolutionaries to 19th and 20th-century Marxists - are transnational proselytizers that must be contained before their contagion demolishes our own institutions. "If [the revolution] be a panacea, we do not want it," Burke wrote in his Reflections. "If it be a plague," the more likely diagnosis in Burke's mind, "it is such a plague, that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to be established against it."

An ideological rival with expansionist ambitions, thought Burke, had to be contained. Allowing it to fester, mature, and metastasize would only expose allies and the homeland to a more powerful threat in the future. 

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