Rodger Scurton - RIP

Manach

As one of the leading British politican thinkers has just passed away and someone whose wide range of books I'd enjoyed:

"Conservatives have, on the whole, accepted nationality as a sphere of local duties and loyalties, defining an inheritance and a community that has a right to pass on its values from generation to generation. The nation may indeed be the best that we now have, by way of a society linking the dead to the unborn, in the manner extolled by Burke. And for this very reason it arouses the hostility of liberals, who are constantly searching for a place outside loyalty and obedience, from which all human claims can be judged. Hence, in the conflicts of our times, while conservatives leap to the defense of the nation and its interests, wishing to maintain its integrity and to enforce its law, liberals advocate transnational initiatives, international courts, and doctrines of universal rights, all of which, they believe, should stand in judgment over the nation and hold it to account."
~Sir Roger Scruton

"Liberty is not the same thing as equality, and that those who call themselves liberals are far more interested in equalizing than in liberating their fellows."
~Sir Roger Scruton

"A free society is a community of free beings, bound by the laws of sympathy and by the obligations of family love. It is not a society of people released from all moral constraint–for that is precisely the opposite of a society. Without moral constraint there can be no cooperation, no family commitment, no long-term prospects, no hope of economic, let alone social, order."
~Sir Roger Scruton

mal1

Really felt for the man after the New Statesman interview. Agreed with many but not all of his views but he was definitely misrepresented by the new generation of left-winged journalists. Seemed to be a hard working man and a massive Wagner fan. Douglas Murray interviewed him recently for The Spectator.

tdf7187

Just two posts for the foremost conservative philosopher of our era. Talk about dumbing down.

I read and enjoyed "A Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism (2006)" few years' ago.

donaghs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/112240865#Comment_112240865

The New statesman did eventually give a sort-of half-hearted apology. Well, not really an apology

The Scruton affair - New Statesman