How to Be a Conservative

by Roger Scruton

Renowned philosopher Roger Scruton draws on his own experience as a counter-culture presence in public life to explain conservatism in a skeptical age.

With soft left-liberalism as the dominant force in Western politics, what can conservatives now contribute to public debate that will not be dismissed as pure nostalgia? In this highly personal and witty book, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explains how to live as a conservative in spite of the pressures to exist otherwise. Drawing on his own experience as a counter-cultural presence in public life, Scruton argues that while humanity might survive in the absence of the conservative outlook, it certainly won't flourish. How to be a Conservative is not only a blueprint for modern conservatism. It is a heartfelt appeal on behalf of old fashioned decencies and values, which are the bedrock of our weakened, but still enduring civilization.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Cultural, History, Audiobook, Economics

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Sir Roger Scruton was a writer and philosopher who has published more than forty books in philosophy, aesthetics and politics. He was a fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He taught in both England and America and was a Visiting Professor at Department of Philosophy and Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.

In 2015 he published two books, The Disappeared and later in the autumn, Fools Frauds and Firebrands. Fools Frauds and Firebrands is an update of Thinkers of the New Left published, to widespread outrage, in 1986. It includes new chapters covering Lacan, Deleuze and Badiou and some timely thoughts about the historians and social thinkers who led British intellectuals up the garden path during the last decades, including Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband.

In 2016 he again published two books, Confessions of A Heretic (a collection of essays) and The Ring of Truth, about Wagner’s Ring cycle, which was widely and favourably reviewed. In 2017 he published On Human Nature (Princeton University Press), which was again widely reviewed, and contains a distillation of his philosophy. He also published a response to Brexit, Where We Are (Bloomsbury).

Reviews

[Nick Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit weak to be honest. As with all books which try to articulate a conservative philosophy it runs into trouble as soon as it realises that a hall mark of conservatism is its aversion to philosophy. Conservatism, as far as it goes is the belief that things are better now than they have been in the past and change, whilst necessary, should come about in a slow and gradual fashion so as to preserve the accumulated benefits of history and avoid the pitfall of radical political experimentalism. As such, most defences of conservatisms amount to little more than pointing out that all other political systems are regressions.

On this point Scruton is particularly careless, his dismissal of socialism seems to boil down to the fact that empirically it has shown itself to be undesirable (a fair point) and they fact that it views economics as the zero-sum game in which a gain by someone is a loss by someone else. This 'zero-sum fallacy' as Scruton terms is slightly problematic. Firstly, it is not entirely clear why it is a fallacy, economics, as the distribution of scarce resources, when seen at a large enough scale, is a zero-sum game. Indeed in a closed system the only way for someone’s gain to not equal someone else's loss is for the total number of goods/resources/capital in the system to increase, hence the expansive tendency of capitalism identified by Marx. Regardless of whether you think that this will or should bring about the collapse of capitalism (I don't on both counts) it is hard to argue that feeding the capitalist minotaur won't lead to either massive environmental degradation or the unsustainable creation of money, as occurs in the City of London and on Wall Street.

It is not only socialism which bares the brunt of careless or truncated analysis and questionable history. The post-modern rejection of universal truth is rejected on the basis that it leads inevitably to nihilism, without any explanation as to why this might be anything more than undesirable. That something is not very nice is not a reason that it may not be so. Scruton also settles in the Nation state as the natural political community and rails against the expropriation of powers by super-national bodies but without any clear analysis of what this may mean. Nation states are as manufactured as any super national entity as the peoples of Italy, Germany and even the United Kingdom will tell you.

Also questionable are the claim that the Industrial Revolution was a good thing as it brought about the wealth which allowed beneficence to take route, and his defence of grammar schools which amounts to little more than the recitation of offensive home-counties pleasantries about how some people can find fulfilment in 'metal work' whilst others are better suited to a more academic education. It seems not to occur to him that it is a wholly evil and immoral system for the state to select children at the age of eleven and try to determine their future and that, as a small government liberal, he shouldn't really believe that this is a very top down dictatorial thing for the state to be doing.

Scruton is right about a number of things, the future of conservatism should not and does not lie down the road of neo-liberalism. The Thatcher consensus seems, inexplicably, to have survived the great crash of 2008, yet the pursuit of all that us shiny, which enshrining the type of small government, individual liberties tenants which conservatives love, it is radical in a way that the attachment politics found on the Tory right is not.

He is also fundamentally right in following Burke in believing that society is a partnership between those who are alive and those who are yet to be born. The role of the state is to protect civil society rather than direct or seek to nurture it. Although to protect it from what? External enemies and internal strife, but what about from itself?

As far as it goes the philosophy of this book is sound, yet whenever he descends from the lofty heights of philosophy to the dirty mire of politics Scruton shoots wide of the mark. For example his claim that ‘the normal form of work is that of the self-employed worker who can plug his or her skills neatly into some terminus of the information economy” betrays an astonishing lack of understanding of the lives of millions of low paid workers in Britain today, including the nearly a million on zero-hour contracts. Likewise his attack on gay marriage is just bizarre and includes the truly strange line "if we ask ourselves how it is that the advocacy of gay marriage has become an orthodoxy to which so many of our political leaders subscribe, we must surely acknowledge that intimidation has some part to play in the matter.” Given that the cadre of people who have changed their mind on gay marriage in recent years includes no lesser figure then Barak Obama, are we to take it that the ‘gay lobby’ has been intimidating the former president of the United States?

Ultimately conservatism is the belief that the accumulated knowledge of generations past cannot be wiped out by the false prophets of radical change. This may be a fine proposition, but all to often, when it comes to politics it results in keeping the bath water in with the baby.

[Brendan Illis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cannot recommend this book more highly to anyone wishing to participate in politics. Scruton blows through many common arguments from the progressive left like a bulldozer through the proverbial pile of dirt. However he does more than just knock down the arguments of others, he slowly and deliberately erects, or more accurately, describes an alternative. That alternative is conservatism, the argument for which he builds from the ground up, going back to the fathers of political philosophy.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

English traditional conservatives today exhibit a depressed passivity. They ruminate, probably with a glass of claret in hand, on how good the past was and how little can be done about today. Doubtless this enervation has to do with living in The Place Where Great Britain Used To Be, which is, like most of Europe (other than Hungary and Poland), a den of thought suppression and self-hatred, cursed with leaders who are mealy-mouthed, emasculated men and women of no use or value. Caught with wine glass in hand, the prolific Roger Scruton, who somehow manages to combine the highest quality thought with constant output, offers us a combination of worthwhile philosophy and worthless enervation. At best, this combination is unsatisfying. More importantly, this book is not timely, because it is inwardly focused and passively philosophical, in an age when too much focus on philosophy, and too little focus on brute action, has, like Judas Iscariot, betrayed conservatism into the hands of its enemies.

Much of this book is a defense of the conservatism of hearth and home—English and Burkean conservatism. In its day, such a conservatism was powerful, for it came from below, preceding and underlying politics, and represented society as it was. It was descriptive, not prescriptive. But it does not work as prescription in the age of liquid modernity. Now, the conservatism of hearth and home is like Shelley’s head of Rameses, a colossal wreck encircled by a bleak wasteland to which it has no relevance and over which it has no power. Scruton’s work is a work of backward looking history, fit for men with pipes sitting by a coal fire, but not for much more.

To be fair, Scruton is here, as in all his works, a fantastic writer. No word is wasted. Innumerable clever phrases that also communicate important truths abound: “The post-war British establishment . . . addressed the nation’s problems by appointing committees of people who had caused them.” Or (though here quoting Matthew Arnold), “I hold that ‘freedom is a very good horse to ride, but to ride somewhere.’ ” But all this polished prose, like the horse, needs to go somewhere, that is, somewhere useful, and it doesn’t.

Scruton begins with “My Journey”; he is today 73, so that’s a fairly long journey. His father was a socialist with strong Burkean leanings; Scruton personally began his journey to conservatism after personally seeing the destruction and nihilism on display by leftist students (“middle-class hooligans”) in 1968 Paris, when he was in his mid-twenties. After getting a Ph.D. in philosophy, he struggled professionally due to discrimination against him because of his conservative views. His journey to conservatism became complete upon first-hand viewing of Communist countries in 1979, and his academic career was forcibly ended after the magazine he edited, "The Salisbury Review," published the heroic Ray Honeyford’s famous 1984 complaints about the negative consequences of so-called multicultural education (an episode covered in another lament by another enervated English conservative, Peter Hitchens).

As many English (and some American) conservatives, Scruton is of very mixed mind about Margaret Thatcher and the unfettered free market in general, and given his background and age, her career looms large in his thinking. He honors Thatcher for restoring some degree of prosperity and strength to Britain, but criticizes her for undercutting the little platoons of British society. Scruton, though, more than others critical of Thatcher, seems to recognize that given the precipitous decline of British society, which has accelerated since Thatcher, she was both a temporary respite and a necessary measure to prevent total British collapse. He primarily criticizes her for lacking her own coherent philosophy, although one can legitimately notice that as with carpenters, hammers, and nails, that’s likely a gap Scruton sees in every politician.

Before discussing specific philosophical issues, Scruton discusses where he begins, in “Starting From Home.” This is crisply defined Burkean conservatism. “In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing answers that have been discovered to enduring questions. These answers are tacit, shared, embodied in social practices and inarticulate expectations.” “To put it in the language of game theory, [traditions] are the discovered solutions to problems of coordination, emerging over time.” Social contract theories that regard the contractor as the individual Homo oeconomicus are dumb. John Rawls is dumb, too. Various actual thinkers are adduced and discussed, from Michael Oakeshott to Adam Smith to Stefan Zweig. The result is a sound framework for Scruton’s general approach to conservatism.

Scruton’s first specific matter is nationalism. As an increasing number of American conservatives are realizing, in a return to the thought of a more confident American time, Scruton regards pride in the nation as both good and essential for society, and failure to have pride in the nation as fatal. Nationalism means not, of course, the “nation” as an ideology, as a substitute for religion, in the way leftists from 1789 onwards have often presented it. Nor does it mean a national shared religion (Scruton is Christian, but favors religiously neutral government). Rather, the nation consists of the “historical identity and continuing allegiance that unites [citizens] in the body politic.” However, this is necessarily a belief tied to territory, and there must be a shared identity (though one that can be adopted by newcomers). Scruton criticizes the European Union, both in itself and as it relates to British citizens, because it lacks this shared identity, yet presumes to be superior to British law. He wrote this book in 2014, before Brexit, so the angle he takes perhaps is a bit different than he might write today. Nor does Scruton really address, among much talk of shared values and identities, what happens when those disappear within a nation-state, such that fragmentation is the major characteristic of the polity—arguably the condition of the United States today.

More successful is Scruton’s next chapter, on “The Truth in Socialism.” If democracy requires a functioning nation-state with a sense of nationalism, as Scruton argues, every citizen has to have the opportunity for meaningful participation for the nation to function. (Scruton does not address whether democracy in today’s world is a good idea at all.) He explicitly rejects the Nozickian night watchman state, “since civil society depends upon attachments that must be renewed and, in modern circumstances, those attachments cannot be renewed without the collective provision of welfare.” “A believable conservatism has to suggest ways of spreading the benefit of social membership to those who have not succeeded in gaining it for themselves.” The truth in socialism is that we are, in society, mutually interdependent, not, as Thatcher tended towards, and many American conservatives believe fervently, independent operators. Sharing is caring. That doesn’t mean that our current welfare systems aren’t grossly defective and often creators of the “poverty trap.” Nor does it mean that the nation’s wealth belongs to the state, to be redistributed as it sees fit (on this point, Scruton again skewers Rawls, though attacking Rawls is like shooting fish in a barrel). Nor should class-based resentments be encouraged—“duties of charity are not duties of justice,” and we do not wrong one person by giving him no charity while we do give to another. Thus, the English destruction of the grammar schools because they led to elitism was both wrong and stupid. Inequality, though, depending on its source, can be problematic for social unity, and should be considered and addressed.

Similarly, there is “The Truth in Capitalism”—or, as with socialism, some truth. The free market does work best—but, following Adam Smith and, to a lesser extent, Friedrich Hayek, “Those who believe that social order should place constraints on the market are right. But in a true spontaneous order the constraints are already there, in the form of customs, laws and morals.” Legislation cannot create or replace such organic constraints. The “moral consensus of the community” is just as much a part of the invisible hand as the price-setting mechanism, a truth lost on most American conservatives, and sometimes the moral consensus will overrule the price-setting mechanism. We do not allow children to be sold, and traditional sexual morality is “a way of taking sex off the market.” And imposing externalities on others violates both the moral consensus and creates an inaccurate price-setting mechanism. These are not just classic externalities such as pollution; they similarly include those offloaded by many large businesses, such as giant grocery chains with centralized distribution, who offload both obvious costs and less obvious ones, such as the destruction of small, local shops and their associated communities. “In short, global capitalism is in some respects less an exercise in free market economics, in which cost is assumed for the sake of benefit, than a kind of brigandage, in which costs are transferred to future generations for the sake of rewards here and now.” In these days of evil led by giant corporations such as Google, this is more true than ever. None of these criticisms are new, of course, but they are well-written, and Scruton is in many ways here aligned with new voices and new ways in American conservatism, of which Trumpism may be a caricature, but one with truth and possible future heft.

Other chapters cover “The Truth in Liberalism” (liberty and freedom are good, up to a point, Lord Copper, and that point is excessive egalitarianism, embodied in the “search for empowerment” and the creation of positive rights, not to mention that Mill’s harm principle is mostly incoherent and not a plausible basis for evaluating rights), and “The Truth in Multiculturalism.” As to the latter, I would say there is none, at least as the term is used today, and Scruton says much the same, citing and trashing Richard Rorty and others for their celebration of everything that aligns with leftist ideology, and only of those things, which is the true meaning of Rorty’s “pragmatism,” and taking sideswipes at Edward Said for the obvious fact that he and his acolytes believe all cultural values are relative, but claim at the same time Western culture is objectively bad and worse than any other.

Nature, on the other hand, in “The Truth in Environmentalism,” comes in for much praise from Scruton, and here his analysis shines. “[The] conservative cause has been polluted by the ideology of big business, by the global ambitions of the multinational companies, and by the ascendancy of economics in the thinking of modern politicians.” Environmental problems are a prime demonstration of our interconnectedness, something around which Scruton’s conservatism revolves. But just as easily, environmentalism becomes a substitute, and false, religion. And it is also true that “the truth in environmentalism has been obscured by the agitated propaganda of the environmentalists and by the immensity of the problems they put before us,” such as global warming, which has no national solution and will never have an international solution. Not that we need even more government control. “The solution is to adjust our demands, so as to bear the costs of them ourselves, and to find the way to put pressure on businesses to do likewise.” (As in his "Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left," Scruton is a big believer in that the Lord helps those who help themselves, and future societal happiness depends on individual virtuous actions. That this will happen on its own is not a bet I would take.) National sentiment can help in this process, and local sentiment even more. Environmentalism is a topic that clearly very much concerns Scruton; he has written an entire book on it, Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously about the Planet.

Scruton sees a little bit too much of “The Truth in Internationalism” for my taste. It is not true, as a historical matter and far less so now, that “The EU has benign origins and noble intentions that can bear no comparison with those vanished agendas [of Communism, Nazism, and fascism].” In fact, the EU has much in common, philosophically and practically, with all of those, and a rapidly increasing amount in common. It is true, though, that the EU’s lip service to Pius XI’s and Wilhelm Röpke’s “subsidiarity” (also beloved of Yuval Levin and other recent thinkers) is a twisted version of the real thing, involving dribbling a few unimportant powers from the central government to the peasants underneath the ruling class, not the reverse, which is how subsidiarity is usually understood. In any case, Scruton ultimately judges, as he began the book, that “National sovereignty is a precondition of democracy,” which obviously implies that any body whose sole raison d’être is erosion of that sovereignty erodes democracy.

The last quarter of the book turns more explicitly philosophical, with a recap and expansion of what Burkean beliefs, noting the absorption of the civil society into the state, with its fatal effects for a nation. He muses on Schiller, Hegel, and Marx. Religion gets more focus, again with Scruton’s emphasis on the importance, in the West, of the rule of law independent of, but underpinned by, Christianity. He offers a fairly long, though I think deliberately opaque, criticism of same-sex marriage. Scruton objects to the state undermining the norms of marriage, for reasons he explains, but then seems to say the state shouldn’t be prevented from doing so, but rather, “The correct response is to set an example, by living in another way, and by acknowledging the underlying spiritual truth.” Well, maybe, but two pages before Scruton notes the hatred and violence brought to bear on those who do exactly that, which pretty much undercuts his suggestion that “living in another way” is going to have any impact. In the same chapter, he talks about need for “accountability . . . to stand judged in another’s eyes, to come face to face with another person, to give yourself in whatever measure to him or her, or to expose yourself to the risk of rejection. . . . Without [accountability] we can never acquire either the capacity to love or the virtue of justice. Other people will remain for us merely complex devices, to be negotiated in the way that animals are negotiated, for our own advantage and without opening the possibility of mutual judgment.” I have read that in the past, Scruton used similar reasoning, along with the premise that same-sex couples are too similar to each other to act in this fashion, to attack the morality of homosexual conduct. But he appears to be no longer following this forbidden line of thought. Finally, he has a lengthy and worthwhile discussion of art and beauty, rejecting the “tedious culture of transgression” and the dogma of pure relativism in the worth of art.

Scruton ends with “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, But Admitting Loss,” in which citing Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” he notes the loss of English faith, “comfort, membership and home.” Christian culture is mostly dead, which Scruton seems to think is a logical consequence of modern rationality (a very Eurocentric and narrow view, from an American perspective). He muses on Anglican churches, village greens, and beauty as it is mediated through pondering loss. All fine and true, I suppose, but to what point? “We should live in the spirit of our Remembrance Sundays, seeing our losses as sacrifices that have purchased the reprieve that we still enjoy.” Bah. This is the counsel of a dotard in his cups, or of an organ grinder’s monkey, dancing for peanuts thrown by the master who calls the tune. I much prefer the approach of Sean Connery as King Arthur in the not-very-good 1995 movie "First Knight," who, when compelled by his captors to order his people to submit, pliantly begins a meek speech to that effect—and ends it, “I command you all to . . . . FIGHT!” Of course, he immediately gets two crossbow bolts in the chest for his act, but the spirit is correct, and Arthur achieves his immediate and his larger aims. I am not sure what precisely such action looks like in this current age; I expect it will be revealed to us, and that right shortly. But maudlin talk of dead Victorians and immanentizing our losses isn’t going to achieve anything, and if that is the path we choose, our reprieve and our memories die with us. No thanks. I’ll stick with less navel-gazing and more aggressive movement toward a politics of reaction.

[Nick Imrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if this book persuaded me to become a conservative, but I have come away with a strong impression that Roger Scruton is a thoroughly decent fellow. This book is thoughtful, compassionate, empathetic and very interesting.

[Andrea Zuvich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to read a wide variety of books. In "How to be a Conservative", philosopher Roger Scruton covers such topics as history, academia, religion, marriage, love, beauty, pornography, family, and more. Strangely, despite having heard good things about him from my friends who are keen on philosophy, it was the quotes by Scruton that appeared on pages I follow on Facebook (I know, I know) that made me decide to read this book. I'm glad I did because I really enjoyed it - and was surprised by how much I agreed with Scruton. He begins by talking about his childhood and his father's socialism, which was interesting to learn about. I had to agree with him about how difficult, if not impossible, it is to be an "out" conservative in academia (which is largely strongly left-wing and generally not very tolerant of other opinions), and I'm not surprised that he's had to become a self-employed lecturer/philosopher as a result. Very good book, I might read some more of his works in future.

[Amora · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll be honest, I mostly skimmed through this one. Scruton went on way too many tangents for me to enjoy this. I’m being charitable with my 3 star rating. Scruton’s book “Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition” explains conservatism quite well without the tangents. I would recommend reading that instead

[Owlseyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Above photos, May 1968, France)

“It is not unusual to be a conservative. But it is unusual to be an intellectual conservative. In both Britain and America some 70% of academics identify themselves as ‘on the left’, while the surrounding culture is increasingly hostile to traditional values, or to any claim that might be made for the high achievements of Western civilization”

Well, he was there, witnessing students clashing with the police. But no working-class people, save the police. That made Scruton conclude they "hated" something; his posture now on shall be the search for what he "loves"; what he (truly) values.

He knew that the Nazi revolution, the Chinese and the Russian revolutions, brought genocide.

The experience in the East European nations (Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary) will allow him to see and experience what communism is, first-hand. By 1985 he would get expelled from Czechoslovakia.

When he saw Thatcher accessing to power (in 1979) he thought it was “a miracle”; yet, later on, he would say she lacked "philosophy".

Welcome to a “reluctant capitalist" pondering on his own trajectory. A follower of Edmund Burke. Sir Roger Scruton.


UPDATE
Well deserved:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/r...

UPDATE
https://europeanconservative.com/arti...

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the age of Donald Trump, Breitbart, and Fox News what modern conservatives need more than ever are coherent and intelligent spokesmen and that is precisely what Sir Roger Scruton provides for readers as he makes his case in "How To Be A Conservative." Scruton begins autobiographically, detailing how he became convinced of the conservative perspective, particularly as a young man growing up in academia and during the Cold War. He then begins to make his case for conservatism, but he does so by highlighting the truths in various ideas and policies. But while he demonstrates the "truths" found in ideas and policies more commonly associated with conservatism (such as capitalism and nationalism), he also demonstrates how conservatives can uphold the "truths" found in causes that are often associated with liberal politics, such as multiculturalism and environmentalism. I particularly appreciated Scruton's nod to the importance of preserving tradition, the "democracy of the dead" in G.K. Chesterton's phrase, with looking towards the future and the obligation we owe to subsequent generations; hence, why we should not pollute and destroy the environment. Scruton adamantly defends capitalism and private property, but he also laments how economics has run roughshod over those values we hold to be precious, such as the sacred, love, beauty, and home. Scruton writes mostly for the a UK and US audience.

Scruton draws upon many thinkers in this book but he is particularly well-known for his appreciation of Immanuel Kant. I wonder if this is why when he discusses religion, his expression of Christianity is one where God appears more transcendent than immanent? He often seems to appeal to historic Christianity due to its decisive role in the formation of Western civilization rather than the reality of the Resurrection, a more distant and cerebral approach to the Christian faith than one would find in the pious sincerity of a Billy Graham sermon. Scruton also places more emphasis on one's nationality and citizenship in a country as opposed to one's religious affiliation but when he does it, it is to argue against Islamists. Though he may be right (or wrong!) to criticize the tepid ways many governments approach the Islamic threat, I would posit that as a believer my identity as a Christian is more crucial to me than my identity as a Canadian. What would Scruton suggest the orthodox Christian do when secular law overreaches into the realm of the sacred?

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nakon čitanja ove knjige, još sam dalje od konzervativizma.

Rodžer Skruton je engleski nadobudni snob. Ali ne bez stila ni bez znanja. Da je drukčiji slučaj, ne bih ni trošio vreme na njegov lik i delo. Odlike izuzetnosti gospodina Skrutona kvalifikuju ga da bude zanimljiv i onima koji sa njim malo toga dele. Otuda i ovaj moj čitalački izlet, čiji je cilj uočiti kako nečija pozicija može da bude utemeljena. I mada je autor proizveo kontraefekat u odnosu na vrednovanje njegovih svetonazora, učinio je jednu dobru stvar: stilski fino i razložno predstavio osnovni set onoga šta konzervativizam jeste i šta danas može biti. Imajući u vidu u kakvom svetu živimo, tragikomičan efekat izaziva to što Skruton već na prvoj stranici piše o ugroženosti konzervativaca koji se kreću tiho i oprezno poput homoseksualaca koji love međusobne poglede u Prustovom romanu (15). Na istoj stranici stoji i to da su 70% akademski obrazovane populacije SAD i Britanije levo orijentisani (nedostaje izvor), kao i to da je (paz'te sad!) Skrutonov otac Džek pripadao istoj toj, levoj ekipi. Ali nemojmo biti površni – ne radi se ovde o sukobu oca i sina, nego o nečemu širem i razređenijem, Skruton je bio duboko razočaran (!?) protestima 1968. i to ga je nepopravljivo okrenulo jedinoj pravoj strani, strani tradicije, razuma, suverenosti, nacije, slobodnog tržišta, lepote, individualizma, lične sreće. U tom i takvom viđenju stvari socijalisti ne samo što ne razumeju državu, nego, na primer, atomizuju društvo kroz delatnost tajne policije (40), misle da je svaki nečiji lični uspeh predstavlja neuspeh nekog drugog (60) i zabranjuju delovanje humanitarnih društava, kao što su komunisti nakon Drugog svetskog rata u Mađarskoj zatvorilo oko 5000 društava, među kojima i mnoga dobrotvorna i crkvena društva, izviđače, čitalačke klubove, organizacije za pomoć siromašnima (134). Skruton, kao filozofski potkovan čovek, vrlo dobro zna da se ne može doneti zaključak o nečemu u celini, na osnovu jednog primera, a optužiti socijaliste (čak i komuniste) da baš „atomizujuˮ društvo, je smešno. Kao što je smešno to što izostavlja Jugoslaviju kad navodi da su sve slovenske zemlje Evrope bile pod Gvozdenom zavesom. Čim se neki primer ne uklapa u njegovu, gordo i strogo racionalisitčku viziju sveta, on se preskače. Jugoslavija se, doduše, ne previđa na jednom drugom mestu, gde se usputno spominje kao neuspeli nacionalni projekat, a Skruton, premda se udaljava od misticizma, nacionalnu državu objašnjava kao nuzproizvod ljudskog susedstvovanja, gde zajednički identitet čini neslaganje manje neprijatnim (47). Kada postoji osećaj neistovetnosti, onda kreću i sukobi, destabilizacija sistema, pa i rat (48). Još jednom, Skruton je vrlo elegantno, kao da neće, izbegao niz primera multietničkih (i multinacionalnih)društava, koja ne idu u prilog njegovoj tezi. A što se tiče EU (ova knjiga je, inače, izašla dve godine pre Bregzita), Skruton je očekivano gunđav i to pre svega u odnosu na to što, kako tvrdi „ne postoji prvo lice množine čiji su politički izraz evropske institucijeˮ (49). Evropska unija je možda i nekad imala smisla, a danas predstavlja politički savez gde se odluke donose ne odozdo nego odozgo. Skruton spominje uz ugrožavanje nacionalnog suvereniteta, stvaranje nove dokoličarske klase (60), kao i problem migracija, a da ne navede, na primer, razloge zbog kojih je do migracija došlo, a tamo gde to i (može da) radi, kao u osvrtu na razmišljanje o Edvarda Saida (100), on dovodi u pitanje osnovne pretpostavke orijentalizma, negirajući jednakost kultura.

I dobro, mogu nastaviti sa nizanjem očekivanosti, međutim, prekinuću ga jednim iznenađenjem: Skrutonovim priznanjem da novi konzervativizam mora da prigrli ekološku misao. Ali ne kroz globalne, već nacionalne inicijative, koje Struton povezuje sa ojkofilijom, koju određuje kao ljubav usmerenu prema mestu. S tim u vezi, zanimljivo je da određuje nacionalnost kao „oblik teritorijalne privrženostiˮ i „protozakonodavni dogovorˮ (109) i, s tim u vezi, uspešne su samo one ekološke inicijative koje imaju u svojoj osnovi privrženost običnog naroda zajedničkom mestu i resursima (111). Onda uspostavlja jednu zapravo vrlo finu nit razmišljanja o zaštiti prirode u engleskoj kulturi od Robin Huda i Džona Ivlina, preko Raskina, sve do ulaska zaštite životne sredine u englesko pravo 1865. godine (112). Ipak, samo stranicu nakon toga, Struton nekako zaključuje da klimatske promene nisu diplomatski, već naučni problem i da će sve biti rešeno otkrivanjem delotvornog izvora čiste energije! 

I tako, štošta je ovde dodaknuto (pa i to da je Hegel ključan za konzervativizam!), ali o mnogo čemu ne bi bila dovoljna ni čitava jedna monografija, a kad se nešto samo dotakne (kao slika ložača kao izmišljenih poslova u Čehoslovačkoj (22) ili da su spotovi pravljeni tako da u vremenski raspon pop pesme smeste „neki šokantan novi prikaz moralnog haosaˮ (175)), onda se sud o celini nečijeg intelektualnog doprinosa čini nepovoljnijim nego što bi trebalo. A meni je ostalo samo da primetim da se Vlado Đukanović, koji je inače javnosti najpoznatiji kao popularizator gramatike, kao prevodilac dobro držao. A druga stvar je da i dalje ne mogu da pronađem odgovarajući prevod za reč environmentalism, koja je (i ovde) prevedena kao enviromentalizam.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”

The title of Roger Scruton’s thought-provoking and astute book How to Be a Conservative most certainly begs the question why anyone should want to be a conservative. After all, conservatism seems rather fusty and lacklustre both intellectually and as a lifestyle, some people even regard it as the fig leaf of capitalists and nationalists worn to embellish their atavistic egoism with, and John Stuart Mill even called the Conservatives the “Stupid Party”. And yet, during the last few years, I have increasingly felt that the voice of reason is no longer heeded among those who claim to speak for the political majority because essential fallacies inherent in left-wing thinking have been seeping into the liberal middle, and so I must own that my political home is now located in the conservative camp.

Therefore, I was glad to come across this book since Scruton makes a convincing case for conservatism in our day and age, as a valuable antidote to a technocratic pseudo-state called the EU [1], which is no longer in touch with people’s cultural sensibilities and needs, takes away their freedom and responsibility and turns them into passive benefit recipients in order to keep them quiet. It would be too much for a review like this to recap every argument Scruton advances in his case, but still here are some of his main points, taken from his eight “The Truth in …” chapters in which he tries to do justice to various political thoughts and to point out in what way they play into what he regards as truthful conservatism.

Scruton does not share the idea of humans beings as mere homines oeconomici and therefore rejects the merely utilitarian idea of societies and states being based on sober give-and-take contracts, an idea that is prevalent in liberalism and that is probably rooted in Hobbes’s idea of wolf-like man. Instead, he argues that man has an urge to associate in order to create himself a mental homestead in the world, an oikos, and that the ties he forms are shaped by a common territory, a common history, by commonly upheld customs and by neighbourliness. Basically, they are a grassroots phenomenon, and it is on the basis of these ties that people cooperate and subject themselves to a form of government. What is important, in Scruton’s opinion, is that these socio-political units are based on a perception of “we”, ensuring that their members can identify with them and also fulfil their responsibilities towards them, and it is here that he discovers the truth in nationalism, which is not necessarily the jingoistic movement based on birth and a claim to superiority its opponents always make it out to be. Scruton argues that a nation, which has clear boundaries but which is, at the same time, more inclusive than an ethnic or religious community, is the stronghold of democracy. This makes perfect sense to me in that the nation-state is both big enough to ensure a division of labour and tasks without which modern life would be unthinkable, and small enough to guarantee that there is a common identity its members feel united by and that there is a direct connection between the government and the organs of the state on the one hand and those who invest them with their power, even if this connection is based on representative democracy. Just take a look at how much of the nation-state’s sovereignty has been handed over to anonymous functionaries and bureaucrats in Brussels, and you know what Scruton means.

It is quite right that Scruton should emphasize the need for a nation to be based on less exclusive ties than those defining ethnic and religious communities, but at this point I would have liked him to write a chapter on “The Truth in Christianity” because even if we nowadays rightly uphold an individual’s right to their own religious beliefs, it cannot be denied that the Christian religion has played a great part in shaping Europe as we know it. I would even say that our conception of the value of each individual rests on Christianity, whose doctrines teach us to respect every single human being. In fact, Christianity is based on the idea that every single human being can have their own personal relation with God and is endowed with a free will while submitted to the moral rule of law ordained by the Deity. If you ask me, this is, in nuce, what Scruton says about the nation-state and the individual’s position in it. In fact, in a later part of the book, Scruton also mentions the value of the Christian heritage, but he seems slightly dismissive of it. In order not to be misunderstood, let me point out that I am not saying that I would see Christian beliefs as a prerequisite for belonging to the nation – since it is, unlike other aspects mentioned by Scruton, such as neighbourliness and adherence to cultural customs, nothing that can be willed by the individual because you either believe or you don’t –, but I think that the Christian religion was one of the major forces to make Europeans what they are regardless of their personal faith or lack of it.

Scruton also makes a number of other points that are very convincing to me. For instance, he makes it clear that justice does not necessarily lie in equality, corroborating his point by showing that recent anti-discrimination legislation has in fact resulted in creating minority privileges which, in turn, discriminate against those who are not part of those minorities. By the same token, he attacks the tendency of modern states to intrude deeper and deeper into the spheres of public and private life, which is based on a misconception of the tenets of liberalism. Liberalism started out as the endeavour to guarantee individual freedom rights, thus limiting the power of the state, whereas now rights are more and more seen as grants imposing certain duties on citizens, the upshot of this being that the state’s power is indeed increased at the expense of basic individual freedoms.

Scruton also aptly criticizes the culture of repudiation –

”Take any aspect of the Western inheritance of which our ancestors were proud, and you will find university courses devoted to deconstructing it.” –,

which, at least theoretically, runs counter to the tenet of multi-culturalism according to which no culture is better than another, a tenet, which, by the way, has opened the floodgates to cowardly cultural relativism.

Of course, Scruton also has his weak points. While he is right in denouncing the Marxian zero-sum fallacy, which is too simplistic as to give an apt description of the workings of complex economies, and while he justly points out the tendency of modern states to spend too much money on social benefits, often as a kind of clientele policy but at the expense of future generations, his alternative of relying on individual responsibility and charity seems an idea fallen out of time. But then identifying a problem may be a first step towards finding a manageable solution.

Altogether, I was deeply impressed with the clarity and fairness of Scruton’s arguments and can wholeheartedly subscribe to the common (alas, not so common any more) sense of the conservatism he is advocating.



[1] This book was written before Brexit, and Scruton has some very convincing arguments for the UK’s leaving the EU, which are not given in this book but can be gathered from the Internet. While I would agree with Scruton in saying that the EU as such has taken away too much power from its individual nation states and that there is certainly a great need for reform with a view to giving back more influence and independence to European governments and their voters, and while I can wholeheartedly subscribe to quotations such as

”The worst mistake in politics is the mistake made by Lenin – the mistake of destroying the institutions and procedures whereby mistakes can be realized. Something similar is happening to the EU, whose elites, faced with the growing problems posed by popular discontent, mass migration, the troubled single currency and the collapse of the peripheral economies, respond with the single cry: more Europe”,

I would still be in favour of trying to salvage as much as possible from the original European idea.

[Otto Lehto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Techno rock and homosexuals have finally found their arch nemesis. In this book, Roger Scruton presents an eloquent and occasionally thoughtful case for why the old ways are the best. Unfortunately the ambrosia of practical wisdom that he presents is poisoned by a terrifying malady called insipidity.

Conservatives tend to paint themselves as the champions of depth and profundity, and this propensity can be found in their celebration of classical architecture and literature, or of the religious experience. But Scruton's arguments, for the most part, vibrate with a distinct lack of depth and profundity. The book is rather populist and down to earth, which is a wonderful achievement for an unapologetic elitist. But the homely folksiness and anti-elitist common sense that permeates the pages makes such mockery of original arguments and deep thinking that it makes me question whether a philosopher really wrote it. I was truly shocked at how lacking in grace it all appears. His discussions of other philosophers, like Rorty, Marx, Hume, Smith, and Nietzche range from Wikipedia platitudes to downright 4chan caricatures. His cultural criticism of rock music and pornography fails to inspire anything more than a yawn and an eye roll.

Now, I may not be the target audience of this book, being a liberal "Whig." I have a subjective stake in his being wrong; after all, if he is right, then I have been living in sin and error. But I can handle a profound disagreement in such matters. Even on matters of core faith and incredulity. And beyond toleration, I love an intellectual disagreement on that level. Unlike many progressive warriors today, I do not find that word policing is the key to enlightenment or truth. Far from it. We need ideas that shock us and challenge us on a fundamental level, and this is what conservatism does. Unfortunately, Scruton's effort here is disappointingly shallow and boring. Some people might be offended by his openly reactionary views, but the only thing I'm offended by is how trite their exposition is. Where is the eloquence and panache of a cornered traditionalist whose way of life is being constantly threatened by Islamists, feminists, and the European Union? Where is the passion and the drive? The book's soporific qualities make it hard to stay awake all the way to the nasty, offensive bits. For some, this serves to indemnify the horror of their message. But for me, this only makes me wish that the old man still had some power left in his pace maker.

On the more positive side, the discussion on the role of tacit knowledge embedded in institutions and customs - the old Burkean, Hayekian argument - remains vitally important, and Scruton has an admirable understanding of the long-lasting value of freedom. He also provides a useful, although well-worn critique of the shallow Homo economicus view of humanity and the impact this has had on the sustainability of humanity, community, culture, and nature. But perhaps the most fruitful part of the book, for me, is his illuminating exploration of the historical interconnection - the evolving bondage - between markets and civil society as carriers of value and meaning.

The conservative position is an ineradicable one. And it has lasting value. The enemies of free speech mostly come from the left these days, and it is of vital importance to the intellectual culture that people like Mr. Scruton be given a platform, be heard, and be responded to in a civil and courteous manner. But the languid and insipid tone of the book and the shallowness of its metaphysical base are in stark contrast to the lofty ambitions of conservative theology. The book feels like the product of the shallow consumer culture that it so despises. My main problem with the book is NOT that I disagree with his values or arguments - although I mostly do - but that I see through the unoriginal nature and ersatz profundity of it all. It is a bad sign when the best insights are borrowed wholesale from better thinkers. Furthermore, a disturbing number of observations and arguments are so unoriginal that they are probably borrowed from the chit chat of some old ladies down at the local bakery. I guess that counts as "being in touch" with the ordinary people!

Mr. Scruton is not on the side of the angels, as he thinks - nor of the devil, as his opponents think - but of platitudinous, intellectual kitsch. I do not wish to come off as too harsh. I just believe that the conservative movement can do better than this literary equivalent of lukewarm English tea dripping on the carpet, slowly, while an old man rails against the inevitable tide of progress.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been on a Scruton kick lately, and this book stands out as an exemplary place to get acclimated with his work. After a biographical introduction, Scruton explores the truth in various other political ideologies (e.g. "the truth in socialism," "the truth in capitalism," etc.) Scruton then explores the essential attributes of the different ideologies and then critics their excesses. Some of his critiques are trenchant, while others are more differences of emphasis, which I think highlights the fecundity of his mind and his charitable spirit. In addition, certain passages looks like he wrote them last week in their perceptivity. I commend this especially to people seeking to understand what a creative, forward-thinking conservatism might look like.

RIP

[Viola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pēdējā laikā vārds "konservatīvisms" kļuvis teju par sinonīmu aprobežotībai un neiecietībai. Tomēr Skrutona izpratnē, tas ir dialogs starp paaudzēm, veids, kā saglabāt vērtības, ko atzīstam par svarīgām utt.

"Conservatism should be seen in that way, as part of a dynamic relation across generations."

[Lukas op de Beke · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a (fairly young) conservative myself, the question was not if I'd ever read this book, but when. Naturally, I had gotten my hopes up, I expected this book to capture the true spirit of conservatism. Now that I've read it, I can say that, at least for me, it fully delivered. In my view, this book contains the definitive statement of conservatism, adapted to a 21st century context. (this does not mean, I explain later, that I agree with Scruton's particular brand of conservatism.)

As is often the case when I read books, I absolutely relished the beginning. Now, I had previously read another book by Roger Scruton titled England: an Elegy, and so I knew already to expect a wonderful free-flowing style with striking figurative language every once in a while (Brussels is called a "dispossessed city" and he compares consultants and lobbyists with "barnacles" that you find on the keel of a ship, and on some occasions he even comes close to the poetic and the aphoristic ("delay is life"). But whereas that book breathes a conservatism that is very specifically tailored to England with chapters like "English Character" (you know,the stiff upper lip, composure under pressure, good-humoredness, English humor, politeness etc.) and "English Countryside", "How to Be a Conservative" (HTBAC) is meant for a global audience, even if conservatism, at heart, is and will always be tied to a specific country and national culture.

Glancing at the table of contents, another difference becomes apparent, one that has everything to do with structure. Indeed, I found the the book very well pieced together. After giving a brief outline of the positive claims of conservatism, he looks at other political currents or "isms" and separating the good from the bad. In doing so, he cleverly sets himself up to present conservatism as a kind of halfway-house between socialism and libertarianism, between radical equality and radical freedom. This means conservatism comes across as a very prudent, balanced, Scruton might say "reasonable", position.

After a short story of how Scruton came to embrace conservatism, we reach the heart of the book, a chapter called "Starting From Home", where in just a few pages the fundamental tenets of conservatism are summed up. The following notions are, and I wholeheartedly agree, deemed crucial to any conservative position:

- Society is pact between the dead, the living and the unborn. Thus, society is a shared inheritance, a continuous chain of giving and receiving, not a contract.
- To destroy is a lot easier than to create. Therefore, we are, or ought to be, attached to the things we have and see what is valuable about them before we decide to throw them out.
- (Civil) Society depends on relations of loyalty, good will, and good neighborliness, that come into existence through interaction in all sorts of clubs and societies, what Scruton affectionately calls "little platoons" (note the difference here between Society, an amorphous, abstract thing, and societies, the colourful, vibrant fabric that is really experienced by ordinary people. It hardly bears mentioning that the former can only exist in virtue of the latter).
- Important social traditions are not just arbitrary customs, they are forms of (inarticulate) knowledge. They contain the residue of trial and error and can be seen as solutions to problems of coordination, emerging over time. Etiquette and what are considered to be "good manners" are an obvious example of this sort.
- In similar vein, prejudice in an individual is not necessarily a bad thing, it often is an accumulation of reason in society.
- All social contract theories presupposes a relation of membership among those people entering in the contract. Without this relation of membership, the fact that can recognise each other's faces and the fact that they are willing to discuss a future together, there would be no contract to begin with. At least, unless we imagine that people dropped from the sky and landed together in a large meadow. No, as Scruton writes, there is already a "We", that is, a "We, the people" with historic ties that already go back hundreds of years and already belong together.
- Human beings—at least those that haven't been brow-beaten in self-effacing, guilt-ridden, politically correct curricula in left-leaning academic environments—are natural oikophiles. Oikophilia, the counterpart to xenophilia, which is also virtue, is the love of home, i.e. of all that is one's own and, necessarily, not that of everyone else.
- An aversion to excessive interference in society by the state.

I agree with Scruton that any conservative will nod his head in agreement with these points. At the same time, there is still more than half a book to go at this point. And it is when Scruton starts scrutinizing other political traditions of thought, rather too sternly if you ask me, that I found myself drifting apart from him. The main flaw in Scruton's further discussion is in my view his lack of regard for the fact that conservatism is fundamentally about culture and not about economics. That is why I consider it perfectly possible as a conservative to vote for high taxes, redistributive policies, and encourage government interference to give equal opportunity to all.

But first, there is a chapter on nationalism, here I wholly agree with Scruton about the importance of the nation-state and I think he is right to be angered and upset about how nationalist sentiment has repeatedly over the past decades been shot down with ad Hitlerums and cheap caricatures by the liberal elite.

His views on socialism are too severe for me and I don't see how they flow out of conservativism. I disagree with the Scruton that redistributive policies are out of bounds, the majority of those who made a considerable fortune did not do so by their own efforts but by a large dose of luck or inherited privilege. Another point he keeps making is that "society is not a zero-sum game." This borders on being dishonest. Plenty of things in life are zero-sum. There is a limited amount of houses in the better boroughs of London. There are only a limited amount of places at Oxbridge, Harrow or Eton. There are only a limited amount of seats in the Royal Opera House (if there is such a place) or in the House of Commons. And so on and so forth. Every seat, place or house that is occupied by somebody means that everyone else is prevented from doing the same. Also property rights are not absolute but only valid to the extent that an individual can manage the property so as to produce a greater benefit to society than if the property were not held privately. I also disagree with his dismissal of poverty as a relative status or "the comparative inability to enjoy the fruits of the surrounding affluence". It is obvious to me that if every kid in the neighborhood is part of a tennis or spa club that requires a hike of 10.000pounds a year that your parents cannot pay for you will feel poor, regardless of whether you have a roof over your head, nice clothes and three meals a day. This seems to me a truism.

I seem to have run out of steam here. Let me wrap it up by saying that the chapters on internationalism, multiculturalism and environmentalism are where Scruton shines and make some very strong points. For one, he is completely right to be surprised that care for the environment and Green politics has always been a monopoly of the Left, it shouldn't be. Second, he is right to separate national identity and national culture from ethnicity and race, affirming that there is no necessary connection between the two, naming Felix Mendelssohn as a preeminent Jew as well as a preeminent German. His criticism of political correctness, Islam and multiculturalism in reshaping the traditional curricilum is well-founded. The major achievement of Western culture is the move from theocracy to a secular state and "civic culture" and this is a move that Islam has hitherto not been prepared to undertake. Therefore, and rightly because culture is not tied to race, nothing ought to prevent us from declaring certain elements in certain cultures (female genital mutilation, censorship, honor killings, excessive fasting, rules forbidding apostasy, public calls to prayer five times a day that are impossible to ignore) harmful or preferring that these elements are not introduced in our own country. On the positive side, Scruton pleads for a confident sharing in our cultural heritage, taking effort to read our "canonical" works, instead of regarding these works with suspicion. And this also applies to immigration, when immigrants come to our country it is only natural "to welcome them into our culture, not against or beside it."

I found the remaining two chapters of the book— one a revisiting of conservatism "the Truth in Conservatism" with some supplementary ideas and the other a close-up analysis of the (decline of) religion and how it matters to conservatism— somewhat overabundant and less forceful. This
is mostly due the fact that I do not attach as great an importance to religion as Scruton does. To me, conservatism is not inherently bound up with religion (i.e. not directly, not in the sense that we admire a cathedral for its beauty, which I would say is merely a fortunate overlap, and one of many, with religion), where religion is to be understood as a belief in God, other metaphysical doctrines and a more general sense of spirituality. Really, there is no need for that to be a conservative.

TL;DR Must-read: the first two chapters, of which the second is a self-contained statement of conservatism, and the chapters on multiculturalism, nationalism, internationalism, liberalism and environmentalism.

[Laila · Rating 3 out of 5]

This must be the loftiest book that I ever read thus far; the first four chapters were digestible, but it went downhill from there, it was a dreadful experience, but I read on. It’s akin to dragging your feet to the finish line—close yet so far—because your mind is not in it anymore but you’re not a quitter either! I’m not sure who’s the target audience for this book; certainly not for the common folks who are curious about “how to be a conservative” because as simple and as straightforward the title seems to come across, to understand the main ideas in this book you need prior knowledge of wide-range of subjects from history, languages, arts, politics, economics, political philosophy, philosophy, religions, etc. The author assumed the reader ought to read widely before reading this book. As a result, even if he has a brilliant thing to say, he left his reader annoys with him for assuming much. At least that’s how I feel. For example: “The Upanishads exhort us to free ourselves from all attachments, to rise to that blissful state in which we can lose nothing because we possess nothing.” (pg. 183) Who/what the fuck is Upanishads? So, it’s not enough that you need good prior knowledge of the Bible, equally, you need good prior knowledge of Hinduism as well! Based on this book, I won’t move to conservative camp anytime soon.

[Justinian the Great · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great. True conservatism means to see that there are real instrinsic values that are distinguishable, and by these values the western society has become what it is, there's no western society without the values that built it, what the current ideologies have been doing is to strip away the values from westerners and saying they belong to the void and came from nowhere, what's worse is if anyone dares to be a heretic some punishment will be applied some way or another. These ideologies are relativistic, but at the same time they claim that human beings are equal and human rights, on what basis? Science alone cannot prove human equality. The most respected secular social scientists in China[1] and also in the West hold the opinion that the Christian idea of transcendence was solely the basis for these concepts. Scruton shows over and over how they contradict themselves time and time again. There's not much thinking behind the current ideologies, they are blind and stupid.

1 - Timothy Keller - The Reason for God

[J TC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Scruton - Como ser um Conservador

Da leitura do livro de Roger Scruton “Como ser um Conservador”, sobrevem-nos a sugestão de como se ser um Conservador no Século XXI, mas nunca conseguimos definir exactamente o que é ser um conservador. Talvez, como sugeriu o autor, talvez seja difícil rotular as pessoas e em especial as genuinamente inteligentes.
Roger Scruton (1944-2020) foi um importante pensador da segunda metade do Sec. XX e eventualmente o defensor mais acérrimo do conservadorismo dos finais do Sec. XX. Dotado de uma escrita mordaz e de uma cultura superior, Roger Scruton leva-nos neste seu livro numa viagem que começa com as recordações de seu pai Jack Scruton, e no amor que este lhe incutiu pela cultura e tradição inglesa, e que termina com um aviso sobre os riscos para a sociedade ocidental, humanidade e sustentabilidade do planeta que as derivas extremadas, quer de raiz socialista, quer liberal podem-nos fazer incorrer num futuro incerto e perigoso.
Se pudesse resumir o livro de Roger Scruton para definir o que é ser conservador utilizaria duas expressões por si usadas: “é necessário colocar o Oikos na Oikonomia”, “qual a necessidade de muitas mudanças quando para o mesmo efeito o que temos já nos satisfaz plenamente”.
Com a primeira afirmação Roger Scruton salienta-nos que o destino do homem não é a economia, o desígnio da humanidade não é o do “homo oeconómicus” dos liberais de última geração, que a globalização não é (como se viu recentemente) o fim da história. Para o autor a economia é um meio de se atingir um fim que descreve como Oikos, e com o qual pretende insinuar a necessidade de cuidarmos da nossa casa, do nosso ambiente, da nossa cultura e das nossas tradições, i.e., do grupo a que pertencemos.
Com a segunda ataca ferozmente todos aqueles que vêm no crescimento continuo uma necessidade de sustentabilidade da nossa economia e da sustentabilidade em geral. Como bem salienta o autor, nem um crescimento continuado é moralmente aceitável, nem ambientalmente sustentável, para além de que muitas das mudanças tidas à sombra do crescimento só nos trazem ansiedade, desconforto e um profundo sentimento de perda.
Neste seu livro, Roger Scruton aborda-nos o que entende ser em finais do século XX as principais características do pensamento conservador nas várias vertentes (política, social, religiosa, estética, cultural, e de respeito para com as tradições e o ambiente), não se furtando à comparação do seu pensamento com as outras correntes políticas culturais e sociais dos nossos dias (socialismo, capitalismo, liberalismo, nacionalismo, multiculturalismo e internacionalismo).
Não estando de acordo com o autor em vários pontos, nomeadamente na relação do autor com a religião, da qual me afasto, nem da sua visão da sociedade com uma organização ascendente, por entender que tal como Roger Scruton rotula de utópica a sociedade do “bom selvagem” de Jean-Jacques Rosseaux, também a sua concepção de organização social ascendente em áreas como saúde, educação e segurança social, se teoricamente apelativa, neste mundo “quente, plano e cheio” é nostalgia. É como, e citando o autor, se tentássemos reviver o passado, e lhe extirpamos as partes deprimentes iríamos acordar para lamentarmos a perda do sonho. Outros há ou que não poderia estar mais de acordo quer pelo conteúdo quer pela forma poética como foram descritos.
O primeiro destes argumentos advém da forma como o autor fundamenta a organização da nossa sociedade ocidental. Segundo o autor há três características importantes na nossa sociedade ocidental. A primeira sobreveio dos movimentos iluministas (britânico, francês e americano) e para os quais a libertação da sociedade dos grilhões feudais e eclesiásticos devolveu ao homem a liberdade, uma liberdade que só pode ser cumprida se articulada coma mesma liberdade que reconhecemos nos outros. Ninguém é verdadeiramente livre se não reconhecer essa mesma liberdade nos seu pares. E é desde o reconhecimento desta liberdade (Jonh Lock – Second Tratise of Governement pub. 1689) que qualquer um é livre em exprimir a sua opinião, mesmo que isso afronte outros. Este é um dos pilares do pensamento conservador de Roger Scruton que o desenvolve dizendo estar o mesmo em risco quando todos aqueles que têm opiniões dissonantes do politicamente correto, seja imigração, igualdade de género ou multiculturalismo, logo sejam intimidados e perseguidos, curiosamente por aqueles que se consideram humanistas, e defensores dos direitos do homem.
As outras duas características da nossa sociedade ocidental encontramo-las logo no início do livro, quando o autor se refere ao “Habeas Corpus” que protege o cidadão das arbitrariedades do poder instituído, fazendo do governo o servo do cidadão e não o oposto, e a “common law” enquanto conjunto valores culturais em que a nossa sociedade assenta, derivados dos princípios da nossa herança cristã assente no arrependimento e no perdão. Estes últimos, os derivados desta antropologia cristã onde assenta todo o edifício jurídico da nossa civilização, e de onde se depreendem coisas tão simples como o respeito pelos nossos pares, o respeito por nós próprios, o nosso conceito de beleza e o nosso amor pelo mundo que nos rodeia.
Um segundo ponto em que a minha concordância com o autor se aproxima quase da totalidade, é o seu conceito de ambiente e o dever que temos em o proteger e respeitar. Citando Edmund Burk, a sociedade é o conjunto dos mortos, dos vivos e dos que ainda não nasceram, o autor pega neste conceito e no respeito pelo Oikos para vetar toda e qualquer tentativa de desresponsabilização dos agentes económicos sobre o ambiente. E fá-lo, não só indicando os habituais culpados do costume, com especial ênfase para as entidades financeiras que define como entidades espectrais que ninguém identifica e são inimputáveis, mas também à economia libertária que entende útil na pequena escala, mas que em grandes corporações resulta no endosso dos custos ambientais para terceiros, como também tem o cuidado de sugerir gestos e atitudes adequadas à preservação do ambiente e biodiversidade: pensar globalmente e agir localmente; remeter os custos ambientais para quem os produz, ou seja desde o consumidor final ao produtor de bens e equipamentos; reforçar o sentimento de que o território é nosso e somos nós que o temos de preservar; instituições internacionais que favoreçam a globalização (OMC, Banco mundial, etc) fazem-no sempre em detrimento do ambiente; incentivar as organizações locais que promovem o ambiente; envolver as pessoas localmente; ultrapassar os objectivos económicos pondo o “Oikos na oikonomia”.
Todas estas medidas são sempre colocadas e propostas de forma ascendente. E é aqui que discordo do autor, pois para um problema tão grave não é possível pensarmos que agindo localmente e aguardando que as pessoas se sintam motivadas, creio que nos arriscamos a perder a nossa já limitada janela de oportunidade.
E se tenho esta discordância com o autor não poderia deixar de sublinhar a profunda ironia com ele vê a formação dos políticos dos nossos dias:
Um político de esquerda constrói-se arranjando uma causa (muitas vezes ambiental, ou outra causa fracturante), entra numa ONG, segue depois para um QUANGO (quasi, autonoma não governamental, organização), distribui dinheiro que outros ganharam, influencia o governo local e se tiver bem conectado com a máquina partidária, aprendes a lidar com a máquina política, tens a vida assegurada e nunca necessitaste de ter um trabalho.
Um político de direita pode ser constituído assim: tornas-te consultor numa empresa, numa área em que não havia qualquer necessidade até tu a teres inventado e criado. Podes ser consultor de imagem, recursos humanos, comunicação, gestão, responsabilidade social, etc. Quase todas as empresas estão pejadas de lapas deste tipo. Crias assim uma necessidade, que se replicares adequadamente, crias também uma rede de contactos necessária para integrares um qualquer partido liberal.
Roger Scruton – Como ser um conservador. Um livro muito bem escrito, um livro a ler e a reler quando a memória nos começar a pregar partidas.

[Camila Rezende · Rating 5 out of 5]

É um dos melhores livros que já li!

Ainda tenho algumas questões pessoais com o conservadorismo. Acredito que baseia-se demasiadamente em conceitos como bom e ruim, que para mim são abstrações insuficientes para determinar um caminho.

A leitura para mim, no entanto, não foi sobre determinar o caminho a seguir. Mas sim sobre permitir-se questionar o que é mais comumente aceito como correto. É permitir-se questionar, sem ser censurado pelo politicamente correto. E é também, sobre entender que duas coisas diferentes e que muitas vezes são apresentadas como opostas, podem ser corretas ao mesmo tempo.
Mas principalmente, é sobre entender que a sociedade se constrói de baixo para cima e que são os laços, e os vínculos construídos localmente que definem nossas convicções, prioridades e de maneira geral, nossas vidas.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a time when there's much debate over what conservatism means, How to Be a Conservative offers a course back to center, and there may be no better guide for this journey than Roger Scruton. Scruton offers not only a definition of conservatism, but also gives a conservative perspective on a number of issues of importance to modern readers. In so doing, he shows more depth to conservatism than it is generally credited with.

Scruton begins by outlining his perspective on conservatism, and his personal journey towards it. Conservatism, he says , is fundamentally a perspective on how a society develops and remains healthy. The most important aspect of this is the bottom-up nature of society, in which it grows from the "little platoons" of family and community upward into a shared culture and history. It was this organic development, represented by examples such as the Magna Carta and the English common law, that provided the stability required for the development of Western Civilization. Therefore, conservatism "tells us that we have collectively inherited good things that we must strive to keep."

This striving to preserve is, in fact, central to conservatism, because preserving is the act of taking what has been given us by our ancestors and passing it on to our posterity. Readers familiar with Edmund Burke will recognize his concept of the eternal contract, in which society is not simply an agreement between living individuals, as some social contract theorists would have it, but is rather a contract between the living, the dead, and the yet to be born. The act of preserving, then, is a duty to the past, and the act of passing on is a duty to the future. Scruton writes, "we are the collective inheritors of things both excellent and rare, and political life, for us, ought to have one overriding goal, which is to hold fast to those things, in order to pass them on to our children." This idea is one that he returns to throughout the book.

In the middle chapters, Scruton explores various issues and ideologies through a conservative lens, beginning the title of each chapter with "The Truth in." This leads to some initially jarring chapter titles for a conservative book (who would look to a conservative writer to express "The Truth in Socialism"?). But what Scruton means is not that these ideologies are correct in all their diagnoses, much less in their conclusions, but that they recognize some fundamental truths. However, on all these issues, "fundamental truth has been captured by people with an agenda, and so turned into a falsehood." Scruton's goal is to understand the fundamental truth in the context of the eternal contract and explain how conservatives should view the issue.

First up is "The Truth in Nationalism," undeniably a controversial topic. Nationalism today is said to be xenophobic at best, and racist at worst, and is often understood by its opponents to be necessarily ethnic. But this is not Scruton's view. He begins by surveying the idea of nationalism, noting its origins in the French Revolution and the apex of its corruption in Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, he sees the idea of a nation as an outgrowth of the what he calls the "first person plural," the implicit social agreements that by definition exist before agreements can be made explicit in political terms. Nationalism is therefore connected to the shared heritage, history, and geography that ties people together.

Here the American reader can sense a slight difference between British and American conservatism, as American conservatives tend to emphasize loyalty to states beside or even above loyalty to the nation, a reality that Scruton downplays somewhat. This difference is likely due to the different histories of the two countries, the U.S. being formed out of 13 distinct political units and cultures that, despite their common heritage, all had different emphases and points of distinction. This it not to say that there are no regional loyalties in Great Britain, or national ones in America, but Scruton's view of nationalism is tied up with a cohesive history that is more prominently a feature of England.

Scruton also thinks that the nation needs to be founded on secular law which operates above religion for the purpose of tying people together. Here again one can sense the influence of European and British history, which has been considerably more racked by religious conflict than has America. Still, there is a sense in which Scruton's point resonates even with an American audience, with its history of religious tolerance. Certainly national identity and loyalty can, in some ways, supersede religious affiliation, though I am cautious to say this too categorically. As a Christian, my political duties might be to the nation (or some lower-level political entity), but my ultimate responsibility is to God, and this responsibility takes precedence over the political authority. Scruton doesn't seem to be disagreeing with this necessarily, but it's an interesting point of potential clarification, this distinction between our political and religious loyalties.

Next, Scruton tackles "The Truth in Socialism," though by acknowledging this truth all he is really saying is that there should be a spirit of voluntary charity and an understanding that just as not all inequalities are unjust, neither are they all just. He states that social harmony relies on controlling the resentment which inequality brings, though he strongly disagrees with the leftist tendency to foster, rather than mitigate, resentment. Additionally, he notes that socialism confuses charity as a question of justice when it is actually a question of duty, of those who have wealth and power to use it for the betterment of their fellow countrymen. He also notes that Americans have historically not suffered as much from these problems due to our charitable and enterprising nature.

Scruton then turns to the truth in what is commonly understood to be socialism's opposite, capitalism. He notes that conservative views capitalism as both the only economic order consistent with the nature and proper ends of man, and one that poses a threat to that nature and those ends. Because of this, Scruton writes that conservatives agree with socialists that capitalism requires restraints, writing that "[t]hose who believe that social order should place constraints on the market are therefore right. But in true spontaneous order the constraints are already there, in the form of customs, laws and morals. If those good things decay, then there is no way...that legislation can replace them. For they arise spontaneously or not at all, and the imposition of legislative edicts for the 'good society' may threaten what remains of the accumulated wisdom that makes such a society possible."

Scruton adds that true conservative opinions on capitalism are not as simplistic as they are commonly represented. He notes that while conservatives respect private property, they have historically prized hard property like land, not the kind of property created by finance capitalism, where people exchange things (like mortgages and shares) that they are not ultimately responsible for. He admits that this opens up the door for corruption, but nevertheless believes this to be a natural extension of the free market. In this way, Scruton updates somewhat the concerns over soft property that were expressed by conservatives of past generations.

Scruton also preserves some of these former critiques of capitalism. “Conservatives believe in private property," he writes, "because they respect the autonomy of the individual, but the market is the benign mechanism that [F. A.] Hayek and others describe only when it is contained by an impartial rule of law, and only when all participants bear the costs of their actions as well as reaping the benefits.” Because of this, not everything labeled capitalism is something that conservatives should defend. Examples of parts of the economy that he believes reap rewards without bearing costs are large corporations, particularly manufacturers and supermarkets (a topic he returns to in a few chapters). The answer, he thinks, is not state control of the economy, but a return to the cultural tenets that hem in the market’s potential corruption.

Scruton next explores "The Truth in Liberalism," by which he means classical liberalism, with its focus on the rights and sovereignty of the individual. He contrasts this classical view with the modern left's expansion of "rights" to include desires which would both intrude on other people's rights and place duties on them which are unjust. On these points Scruton comes across almost as a libertarian. While discussing whether or not people have rights to do immoral things, he admits the difficulty of the topic, noting that John Stuart Mill's harm principle isn't fully satisfying while also stating that rights should give people the ability to live their lives without interference. It's obvious, however, that Scruton believes that there is a limit to this liberty. Ultimately, he comes down firmly in favor individual liberty, though he's not dogmatic about the lengths to which that liberty goes. Overall, this is an interesting chapter, though given my own previous foray into libertarianism, I wish Scruton had spent some time clarifying the differences, if any, between his view of rights and a libertarian's.

Next, Scruton gives a conservative perspective on immigration and assimilation in a chapter titled, "The Truth in Multiculturalism." Here he begins with the effect of Enlightenment view of individuals as endowed with inherent worth regardless of accidents of birth. “The Enlightenment," Scruton writes, "proposed a universal human nature, governed by a universal moral law, from which the state emerges through the consent of the governed." Since the sense of humanity was universal, it applied to all human beings, regardless of whether they were inside or outside a given political order. As a result, the idea of accepting other people into a political society that was not native to them acquired a new credibility.

Those figures who would later be classified as conservatives agreed with the Enlightenment conception of a universal human nature, but cautioned against losing the context of particularity. "For [conservatives], the Enlightenment was not to be regarded as a complete break with the past. It made sense only against the background of a long-standing cultural inheritance. Liberal individualism offered a new and in many ways inspiring vision of the human condition; but it depended upon traditions and institutions that bound people together in ways that no merely individualistic worldview could engender. [The Enlightenment vision] was all beautiful and logical and inspiring. But it made no sense without the cultural inheritance of the nation state, and the forms of social life that had taken root in it."

Scruton notes that, as the ideas of individualism and a common humanity proliferated, culture “proved permeable” to them, and “civic culture” sprung up, in which people were accepted based on a common acceptance of shared beliefs (the assumption being that newcomers would adhere to the standards of their new culture). Scruton here is not denying the importance, even the primacy, of culture, but is pointing out that there developed in the West the idea of accepting people from outside a culture if they were willing to adapt to it. He writes, “The long-term effect of this has been to open Western societies to immigration, and to impart an ideal of citizenship that, it is hoped, will enable people of disparate origins and backgrounds to live together, recognizing that the real source of their obligation lies not in that which divides them - race and religion in particular - but in that which unites them - territory, good government, the day-to-day routines of neighborliness, the institutions of civil society, and the workings of the law."

In this view, immigration places an onus on both the immigrant and the culture to which he is immigrating. The former acquires the duty to respect and even adopt the home culture that he is immigrating to, and the latter acquires the duty to accept those who are willing to do so. If immigration is to work, "it will be thanks to the effort on both sides to integrate the new arrivals into the surrounding way of life, so that the common culture of citizenship adapts to include them." Because of these views, Scruton has no patience for those who would say that accepting immigrants requires the repudiation of one's own culture. In fact, he believes that this would undermine the only foundation on which it can succeed.

Next, Scruton addresses "The Truth in Environmentalism." Here he writes that a conservationist concern for the environment is a proper conservative attitude, one based in the Burkean eternal contract. However, he notes, the leftist approach, with its appeals to government and international bodies to regulate environmental concerns, is both ineffective at its goal and has provoked a conservative response that draws conservatives' attention away from the problem and its true solutions, rooted in stewardship, and toward combating the far-left environmentalist program.

After touching on the truth in internationalism, Scruton spends the final three chapters addressing the truth in conservatism. Much of this revolves around his belief that "Conservatism is not in the business of correcting human nature or shaping it according to some conception of the ideal rational chooser. It attempts to understand how societies work, and to make the space required for them to work successfully."

Scruton closes with an extended analysis of how moderns have been living on the Christian social capital built by past generations, noting the attempts by some some thinkers to preserve Christian culture in the face of the secularization of the last two centuries. That some of them were secularists themselves, and sought to preserve the effects of faith without themselves adhering to it, raises an interesting parallel to Scruton's own work, since he often seems to have more of a social faith than a theological one. This comes through in his discussion of the importance of the Anglican church, which has preserved the appearance of faith while its substance has been lost. Of course, the question is for how long can the unsubstantiated appearance of something be preserved, and since Scruton admits that religious faith is one of the cornerstones of the West, the rediscovery of true faith, and not just its appearance, would appear to be paramount.

Ultimately, How to Be a Conservative is not only an excellent introduction to conservative thought, it offers thought-provoking insights into how to think about some of the most important issues of our time.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voltei a lê-lo para confirmar que o conservadorismo é verdadeiramente quem vê mais longe e melhor defende quem se atrasa. Não concordo com tudo aquilo que Roger Scruton escreve mas reconheço-lhe sempre substancia na forma como argumenta. Como escreveu o Pedro Mexia numa crónica aquando da sua morte, "(...) que o livre jogo do mercado que os liberais defendem determina a erosão dos valores que definem o conservadorismo.(...)""(...) a ideia de que o valor e o gosto não são dispensáveis, a ideia de que existe uma natureza humana; a ideia de que o ambientalismo é um conservacionismo; a ideia de que não há nada de errado em pertencermos a comunidades, em sermos de somewhere em vez de nowhere."
No fundo aquilo que nos querem vender com novidade na politica atual já tinha direitos de autor. A diferença é que foi sempre feita sem panfletos nem gritaria.

Entre muitas ideias retive a seguinte:

"O conservadorismo é a filosofia do vinculo afetivo. Estamos ligados a coisas que amamos, e desejamos protegê-las da decadência. Mas sabemos que não podemos durar para sempre. Entretanto, temos de estudar as maneiras que nos permitem mantê-las através de todas as mudanças por que têm necessariamente de passar, para que as nossas vidas continuem a ser vividas num espirito de boa vontade e gratidão."

Recomendo em defesa da sensatez de todos que tão rara começa a ser.

[Adam Marischuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like everything Scruton writes, this book deserves a careful read. In fact, it deserves a more careful read than the (rather poor choice of) title would indicate. I'm not even convinced that the title accurately denotes the theme of the book.

Firstly, the title implies How to be a C(c)onservative. But the book contains no outline of any particular action. If conservativism is a set of actions, it is a set of mental actions, a way of looking at the world. Secondly, the emphasis could be placed on Conservative, but Professor Scruton has one particular and specific version of Conservativism in mind to the exclusion of many others.

What Scruton offers is an evaluation of the 'truths' in other philosophies, and then a devastating critique of how, in the hands of fascists, liberals, environmentalists, globalists etc. they have gone wrong. Too much of a good thing.

I don't think Professor Scruton would object to (the book) being called "parochial", after all, that is the general thrust of the book, that conservativism is parochial, an attachment to home. This informs everything, from the conservation of the environment to cultural heritage. Economics (oikos=home) is subservient to these goals, as are politics and even religion. Scruton has a very Anglo-nationalist version of conservativism, a little quaint, and very specific. It is not that this version of conservativism is one I cannot sympathise with, it is only that this version of conservativism is difficult to export beyond the boundaries of Merry-Old-England.

American/Canadian conservativism and Continental conservativism share much with Scruton's Anglo-conservativism but depart in meaningful ways. 'Big Tent' conservativism finds room for each, but Scruton's modern Burkian conservativism inherits Burke's distrust of economic free-market conservativism (liberalism) and Scruton's Anglo-conservativism shares the Anglican distrust of evangelical conservativism.

Scruton wrote this book before some rather pivotal events in the course of conservativism (2014), before the election of Trump, the Scottish Independence referendum and the Brexit referendum. How these events might shape the concluding chapters is now only speculation with Professor Scruton's recent passing. Written in the wake of the great recession, with the Cameron government's economy sputtering along, the scepticism towards conservative economics is understandable, but the rapid rise of economic growth experienced afterwards is not anticipated, nor is the marriage of liberal economics with national interest under the Trump presidency.

Though he frequently claims the contrary, the book reads a little like a eulogy. Perhaps he would call it cautious optimism, but it feels like a rear-guard action. This is particularly evident in his closing defence of the Anglican church and English country-sided church architecture. Scruton refers to the buildings the church "maintains" and this word is very apt. Like cut flowers the Anglican church and British conservativism are living off of the past but the past is withering. I shudder to think what Europe would be without her tourism industry, most of which is dominated by pre-modern monuments.

All said and done, a book that belongs in the repertoire of all philosophic conservatives but only hovers on the edge of being a foundational work.

[Mjber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most books on politics express one view and then go on to say why others are wrong, but this is not the case for "How to be a Conservative". Scruton goes to all the philosophies/ideologies of modernity and from them takes the good without forgetting to express the bad and the exagerations, in this way it criticizes both conservative and liberal policies, and reminds us that we can always learn from others, even when we disagree.
There is a lot of good in this book, but I will say that the chapter "The truth in environmentalism" was surprising and delightful. Most conservatives have a problem with this topic because it has been hijacked by the left, its proponents usually refer to international megaburocrisies as the only possible solution while painting doomsday pictures and devaluing human life. What Scruton reminds us in this chapter is that environmentalism is actually the conservative cause per excellance since it is all about preservation of landscape, he also points out that the attitude for conservatives will be different and that local and national measures are more likely to benefit the environment. It is the time for conservatives to take this cause into their own, offering their perspective.
On many other chapters there are truths expressed and sometimes they may seem contradictory like "truth in nationalism" and "truth in internationalism", but Scruton points out they are not, there are issues in which international cooperation is necessary , however he points out Kant's conception of internationalism, not the modern one that consists in the destruction of national identity. The approach is based on common sense, without exageration and name calling.
I will say that I didn't always agree with him. At some point he picks up from the victorian era that families and communities adjusted and will continue to do so, this, to me, seems to run counter to the conservative impulse (and to the rest of the book), since it basically says that it doesn't matter if there are changes humans will adapt, but if this is so, then why are we worried about preservation?
G. K. Chesterton once said that "revolutionists make a reform, conservatives only conserve the reform. They never reform the reform, which is often very much wanted.". Maybe it is that Scruton's type of conservatism is the only possible one in the 21st century, but I wonder if it isn't the worst kind, the kind that doesn't do anything, it simply preserves what others have done, the kind that never reforms the reform.

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there are nuggets to appreciate within this book, they're largely lost in fanciful, incomplete representations of the world and the actors within it. What we're left with, in the end, is a surprisingly incomplete view of how conservatism sees the world and what it ought to be attempting to do.

I would have much preferred a book that lays out a blueprint for conservative thought, and presented some of the ideas which conservatives ought to operate in defense of. More criticism of the excess present in conservative extremes, more explanation of what it is that has led the conservative movement to abandon the pursuit of new approaches to achieving their ends. The chapter making a conservative case for sustainability is a welcome thing to see, but even there, the proposed conservative solution to our ecological crises is badly considered and would be an abject failure if ever attempted.

If I were to boil the issues with this book down to a single item, it's that the book reads as though the author has done little reflection on the true merits and pitfalls of progressive thinking. As so much of the argumentation is built in opposition to progressive thinking, this means the takeaways rarely ring true to people who know even a little bit about what is going on. When you argue against a strawman, as Scruton so often does, you are unlikely to produce work of quality.

Are there moments in this book that are useful? Yes. Does Scruton occasionally point out areas where conservatism genuinely has something to offer in the cultural conversation? Yes. But they're few and far between, and tend only to pop up when dealing with areas of particular overreach and stupidity by the worst elements on the left.

As someone who is generally unsympathetic to conservative thinking, I was hoping very much for something to help me understand people who think differently from me. This book did not deliver.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

How to be a Conservative. According to this book it mainly involves thinking that you got into grammar school through your own individual efforts; calling poor people idle and lazy; denouncing disabled people as hyperchondriacs and malingerers; thinking climate change can be solved through market forces and thinking that the Christian family is the key to a stable society with homophobia that's not even veiled. He then wonders why people call him homophobic - maybe saying the homophobic things Roger!

There's lots of Nietzsche and Hayek plus a basic misunderstanding of Marx and Engels which would be disappointing in a high school politics student. If students stated unevidenced opinions as facts this often, they would fail, so how he got a job in an academic institution is rather astounding.

[Mirjam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fuck this guy.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

My political views are centrist but leaning on the left. I'm aware centrist does not say much and sounds tepid, but I cannot be just "from the left" since left wing politics have taken a postmodernist turn I really do not appreciate. Everything has been lost in total confusion and the universalist message of the old left has been watered down to give way to myriads of egoistical little causes that lead nowhere politically. The left has been captured by deconstructive theorists (if everything can be deconstructed then nothing is real) and lobotomised by the new capitalist elites who have managed to persuade everyone that class wars are over and that we should just all be happy and enjoy our consuming. And this is how we got the populist far right back as we are reaching the limits of our modern capitalist system.
My leftish leanings have always prevented me, stupidly I admit, from giving Roger Scruton a chance (that and the fact that he liked hunting with hounds). So I bought this book a few months ago (It was on sale at my local Japanese second hand bookshop) and forgot about it. Then Roger Scruton died and I started reading it.

Scruton was one of those rare intellectuals. He is honest . His thoughts are clear and he gets them across effectively and most beautifully. He lived his life as a misfit of academia because, as he was right to say, academia has become a sect, a close circle of political correctness and deconstructed life, where no dissenting voice is allowed to be heard, a place where nothing advances anymore but rather goes in circles of self satisfaction, smugness and superiority, where every “accusation was proof of guilt. And yet nobody ever told us what the crime consisted in. (…) Being classed as a racist gave me a faint intimation of what it has been like, in other times, to belong to some despised and persecuted minority.” Having read many of his obituaries (pros and cons alike) and some short biographies, I concluded he was not a racist in any way. He was just not that enthusiastic about globalisation and the problems it brings. He was against it not because he was a racist but because the economical dimension of it and its ideology threaten our freedoms, secularism and the rule of law as established by nation-states. And again I found myself agreeing with him.

The book is constructed simply. He starts with himself, how his socialist father inspired him and how he came to position himself on the opposite side of the political spectrum and why ( this is where I got hooked). He praises the post WW2 educational state system that allowed him to get an outstanding education (and got him the wrath of his father who never spoke to him again for getting a bourgeois education). He mentions very interestingly his fight alongside dissidents in Eastern European communist countries and how it strengthened even more his beliefs in freedom, society, the rule of law and the security of property. That is what conservatism is to him. He thinks we can all agree on the fact that “good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created”.
Many critics see conservatism as exclusively static and I was one of those. But Scruton presents it in a way that says more : let’s not wallow in the sadness of what we have lost but let’s see what we still have left of centuries of building civic tradition, see what we can toss and what we need to keep in order to be able to go on as a functioning society, together.
It is true that he sees society through the lens of the nation-state, and the nation-state is not a popular factor anymore, among the elites and ruling classes that is. It is a completely different story when populations are concerned. The nation-state brought prosperity to them and they are not willing to give it up, and Scruton tells us we shouldn’t. Not out of nationalism or racism, but because the nation-state is the foundation of our laws and customs. It needs to be mentioned that his book is more oriented towards an Anglo-Saxon readership, but the basic ideas are quite universal to any modern democracy.
His conservatism is also secular. Because only secularism and shared values and laws can keep us together, even when we are not of the same origin. He does talk a lot about Christianity but only to show how it impacted our modern world, the good things it left behind after being cast into the private sphere.

In the following chapters, he adopts a very interesting method to explain why conservatism matters. He starts from home, as he says. He develops on British conservative philosophers, what is special about British and American democracy (as the last inherited from the former) and what the social contract really means. One of the most striking phrases in the second chapter is one that is really modern: “The error of reducing political order to the operations of the market parallels the error of revolutionary socialism, in reducing politics to a plan”. He considers that Homo oeconomicus, “a rational chooser who acts always to maximise his own utility, at whatever cost to the rest of us” is not feasible. We are not rational beings in that sense as we are too attached to our territory, where we have chosen to live with others by certain rules accepted by all (The nation-state). The conservative’s purpose is to preserve democratic society and its rule and see to it that the state does not overreach into our freedom and rights but remains a guardian of them.
He then develops many chapters where he highlights the truths in every ideology or policy but at the same time showing how conservatism sees them. It is a very inclusive approach. Everything is compared, acknowledged, discussed. Many examples are given and many solutions. His chapter about the environment is very common sense and true.

He ends the book by talking about values, about morals, work ethics, responsibility, risk taking, what it means to live life in a functioning society. He also rightly sees the failings of the construction of Europe and it is especially interesting to read in light of the recent Brexit drama. The ending of the book is too beautiful to be completely explained here, every reader should witness it for themselves.

Having said all that, there are parts in the book where I don’t agree with him. I’m very concerned about healthcare and education and he hardly speaks about the former. As for education , he seems sometimes to be confused about how to feel about his own education and the fact that It was the State that gave it to him. It took me a while to guess that he was actually more concerned with the downturn education had taken in Britain since the 1970’s approximately. He is also very confused about what it means to be deserving of something, but I think every conservative is unfortunately.

As one of his obituaries said, Roger Scruton deserves to be disagreed with. I discovered a decent human being genuinely concerned about the way people live their lives and how they have organised to live it together. There is no arrogance in him, only empathy and it’s not posturing. I’m really enthusiastic about the fact that his many ideas in his last report as the participant in the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission will probably have an impact on future UK housing planning.

‘He volunteered the last period of his life to get this done, because he recognised something very important: housing is not for the elite. Everyone, regardless of their income or demographic, should have opportunity to live in a beautiful place.’

Despite his many failings as a human being (the controversy around his supposed homophobia. He later admitted his views had changed which is another sign of a great personality), his general message is a positive one and we should nurture it now that he is gone. He hasn’t turned me into a die hard conservative but he makes more sense to me than the countless other fancy righteous thinkers we have in our midst.

[Paulla Ferreira Pinto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aquietem-se os espantos causados por esta notação! Esta esquerdalha não o deixou de ser, não se rendeu ao campo oposto, não se deixou fascinar pelos encantos que não encontrou na natureza conservadora.
Aliás, se alguma coisa retirou desta leitura - e obviamente retirou- foi o reforço daquilo a que pode chamar com modéstia as suas convicções.
Mas tal não impede que tenha gostado de ler a obra, que reconheça a sua qualidade literária, que dela tenha retirado alguns ensinamentos e com ela tenha aprendido ou confirmado algumas suspeitas. Entre estas as de que existem em todos os seres razoáveis, humanistas e bem intencionadas, bases benévolas de senso comum que permitem alcançar os consensos necessários à desejada convivência democrática entre os que entendem que as minorias histriónicas conformam a actuação de governos politicamente correctos - tese defendida pelo autor-, com os que entendem que os governos devem ouvir as minorias e acolher as suas pretensões no quadro geral de equilíbrio das relações sociais, que são evidentemente emanações da dignidade humana e, por consequência, constituem direitos humanos - caso desta que se assina.
Portanto, obrigada Mr. Scruton, pela lição q este livro contém. Não me converteu numa conservadora, antes me fixou ainda mais à base que tenho por minha, mas ajudou-me a perceber o que move um conservador, no mais das vezes o repúdio mal disfarçado pelo novo e a crença que os demais, os outros, não querem preservar os legados da história.
Nada mais incorrecto no que me respeita , mas ainda assim esclarecedor e enriquecedor.

[Bobparr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saggio di non immediata lettura e assimilazione, pieno di riferimenti storici, filosofici, soprattutto politici. In certi punti non si riesce a non essere d’accordo con il buonsenso l’autore, mentre in tanti altri è davvero difficile invece accordarsi con il suo pensiero… Che comunque rimane sempre cristallino, limpido, logico, dimostrabile, comprensibile anche se non si è punto d’accordo.
Di queste teorie le destre belluine di casa nostra sono piene, ma senza l’approfondimento e l’intelligenza con le quali sono perorate da Scruton; di queste idee si prende solo l’involucro stantio, e lo si abita con la compiaciuta e crassa ignoranza dell’indifferenza e dell’individualismo più gretto.
In definitiva, un testo con il quale essere perfettamente in disaccordo, ma che è educativo leggere.

[Jeremy Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very clear thoughts on things I am not entirely on top of. Also very interesting how conservatives and progressives agree on so much. But conclude on the how’s quite differently. So many other things I want to read now.

[E.T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is conservatism ?
The core principle of left-"liberals" is equality - which is in direct conflict with (classical) liberty/liberalism. Egalitarian/socialist/leftists were not sexy terms, to liberal utha liya. #FacePalm
It is a bit like claiming one is both male and female simultaneously ! So, you will find left-liberals supporting illiberal minorities/(excessive) reservations and even violence bcoz the key issue is to bring them at equality with majority and protect them from "majoritarianism". This also includes needlessly denouncing the majority which can be comical at times. Or political correctness which is the direct opposite of freedom of speech.
So whenever you engage a left-liberal, remember - (atleast somewhat) illiberal. I am not saying liberty is the only principle worth having. I am just saying lets be clear on what we stand for.
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I think if socialists and violent Maoists define the extreme left of the political spectrum then ardent libertarians and violent fascists belong to the extreme right of the political spectrum. Liberty is a necessary but not sufficient condition to have a functioning state and society since a laissez-faire society does not account for the accidents of birth. Such a society would be intrinsically unfair and unequal and breed resentment. And if members/citizens are resentful there is no sense of a shared citizenry and the common good. So, an over-emphasis on either liberty or equality is unfeasible and there has to be a balance. It is the side from which you approach the centre, whether you are more for liberty or equality which defines you as Right-Wing or Left-Wing respectively.
I guess "centrism" is something which genuinely recognises the need for both liberty, equality and also a vital missing ingredient - nationalism.
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To be honest, unlike left-liberalism (equality) and classical liberalism (liberty) I have unable to lay my finger on the core principle of conservatism even after reading this book. I know what it opposes - socialism, high taxes, redistribution, high immigration, large government, internationalism and it stands for nationalism and traditional moral and religious values in society (though it is secularist). But I am still not clear where they stand on equality of opportunity. Also, where do they differ from classical liberals on matters other than nationalism ? The book failed to satisfy me completely and I will have to read more.