Scruton on Conservatism

Sir Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher who has published more than 40 books in philosophy, aesthetics, and politics. He was interviewed recently by Madeleine Kearns for National Review about his latest book which is titled Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, and he has some pithy things to say.

Here are some excerpts from the conversation with a few thoughts of my own interspersed:

Madeleine Kearns: In your most recent book, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, you provide a distilled synthesis of modern conservative thought. First, I’d like to begin with your book’s last chapter, “Conservatism Now,” in which you reference William F. Buckley Jr.’s first book, God and Man at Yale (1951).

In that book, which arguably launched the conservative movement in America, a 24-year-old Buckley wrote: “I believe that if and when the menace of Communism is gone, other vital battles, at present subordinated, will emerge to the foreground. And the winner must have help from the classroom.”

Do you think Buckley was correct? If so, what are these “other vital battles”?

Sir Roger Scruton: Yes, Buckley was right. There is the vital battle to defend fundamental institutions, such as marriage and the family, and to counter the censorship of all opinions that express an attachment to our cultural and political inheritance.

MK: What is the difference between a reactionary and a conservative?

SRS: A reactionary is fixed on the past and wanting to return to it; a conservative wishes to adapt what is best in the past to the changing circumstances of the present.

MK: Why do many on the left consider conservatism to be inherently evil (rather than cuddly)?

SRS: The principal reason is that people on the left have illusions about human nature and think they prove their virtue by broadcasting those illusions. Anyone who punctures those illusions is therefore not just a spoilsport but a threat. What the self-declared “virtue” of the left amounts to can be witnessed in what happens to ordinary humanity when the left takes power.

I think here I would add to what Scruton says. A big part of the left's hatred for conservatives, IMO, stems from the fact that The left bases their policy prescriptions on emotivism and conservatives base theirs on reason and experience. For example, the left believes in their heart that socialism should work, but reason and experience demonstrate that it doesn't.

Thus, when people are shown that the ideas that they've invested their lives in are utterly wrong, it generates resentment, bitterness and ultimately hatred for those who show them to be wrong.

MK: Can one be a hopeful conservative without God?

SRS: Yes, but it helps to believe in God, since then one’s hopes are fixed on a higher reality, and that stops one from imposing them on the world in which we live.

Actually, I don't know how anyone can be a hopeful anything without God.

If there is no God what is there to hope for? What difference does it make what the world will be like after our deaths? Hoping that our descendents have a pleasant world to live in is a nice sentiment, but a couple of generations down the line you and they are utter strangers to each other, and their lives are just as pointless as are ours today. What does it matter to anyone living today whether the world's a better or worse place in 2100? If there is no God, hopefulness seems quaint, meaningless, and out of place.

MK: You mention a reluctance on the part of some conservatives to self-identify as such. Surprisingly, perhaps, you include George Orwell and Simone Weil in this category. Can you explain why they, too, belong to the “great tradition”? How can you spot a conservative?

SRS: I try to explain this in my book. Conservatives reveal themselves through their care for ordinary human things, and their recognition of the fragility of decency and the need to protect it.

MK: How is Islam to be best accommodated in Western democracies?

SRS: By engaging Muslims in discussion and explaining to them that we live under a rule of law which is man-made, not God-bestowed.

I'm not sure why Islam should be specially accommodated at all. Western democracies have freedom of religion; that's all the accommodation the state should make for any religion.

If there's to be accommodation it should run the other way. Muslims should accommodate themselves to living in a country that holds constitutional values that their religion may make no allowance for.

In other words, the Muslim should accommodate him or herself to the laws and values of the land in which he/she chooses to live, not vice-versa.