The Preservation of Difference

So I was wondering for a while why I was fascinated by words ending in "-ide," and then I forgot about my question, and then I read this in Burke:



On the scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order. [Beautiful writing, no?] All homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, parricide, and sacrilege, are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide.



These words represent distinctions! Fitting distinctions, nonetheless (at leaast according to Burke). Killing a king means something different from killing anyone else, just as killing your father is very different from killing a man you've never met. In Tocqueville's democratic age, everything becomes homicide.