Quin, your cite to Burke at once brought to mind a few lines
from Philip Rieff, of whom I am a great and all-too-rare
enthusiast:
A culture in control needs first of all to
preserve that control by not reaching its legal arms too far into
the labyrinths of public life. The guardians of any culture must
constantly protect the difference between the public and private
sectors — and encourage forms of translation between the two
sectors; that is the meaning of ritual in all traditional
cultures.
For the reader who’d like to read deeper, I’ve put together a
sort of concordance of my glosses and commentaries on Rieff and
culture
here.