WHY I'M A CONSERVATIVE -- Walking The Intellectual High Wire With Roger Scruton....

September 05, 2003: Today's recommended reading is about as far away as you can get from the broad fusillades of pragmastism, wit and outraged innuendo regularly unleashed from the frontlines of the liberal-conservative battle by the likes of Ann Coulter and David Horowitz. It's an essay by noted conservative author, Roger Scruton, titled Why I became a conservative .

Roger Scruton is more philosopher than journalist. And his perspective is more cultural than political -- a matter of "aesthetics" rather than political or economic values. In fact, much of his writing is often ontological -- in the philosophical sense -- an attempt to work out a conservative philsophy of being, determining why we are here and what we should do with the brief time allotted to us to in this all too material world (as Madonna might put it, especially now that she's into studying Hassidic thought).

A warning that reading Roger Scruton is an acquired taste. He's a man who uses big words and expresses big thoughts. He'd just as well quote T.S. Elliot as Charles Krauthammert, or sing the praises of Edmund Burke rather than Bill O'Reilly. However, he has a lot to say of importance, especially to any young casualties of a modern-day university education who have been exposed to the irridating poison of post-colonial "critical thought."

For example, Scruton effectively critiques the destructive nihilism of notorious left-lib cultural icon and deceased French psycho&analyst, Michel Foucault. As Scruton notes about 'Les mots et les chose,' Foucault's clarion call to the young and foolish to join together in cultural rebellion: It is an artful book, composed with a satanic mendacity, selectively appropriating facts in order to show that culture and knowledge are nothing but the 'discourses' of power. The book is not a work of philosophy but an exercise in rhetoric. Its goal is subversion, not truth, and it is careful to argue -- by the old nominalist sleight of hand that was surely invented by the Father of Lies -- that 'truth' requires inverted commas, that it changes from epoch to epoch, and is tied to the form of consciousness, the 'episteme,' imposed by the class which profits from its propagation. The revolutionary spirit, which searches the world for things to hate, has found in Foucault a new literary formula. Look everywhere for power, he tells his readers, and you will find it. Where there is power there is oppression. And where there is oppression there is the right to destroy. Most important is Scruton's own celebration of the Anglo-Saxon intellectual roots of Western liberal-democratic republican government (and the still enduring philosphical principles that inspired the revolutionary ethos of America's Founding Father's) as a real-world answer to the abstract, utopian radicalism of the likes of Foucault or Derridaut. As Crouton puts it, in describing the benefits of his education as an English lawyer: In fact I never practiced at the Bar and received from my studies only an intellectual benefit -- though a benefit for which I have always been profoundly grateful. Law is constrained at every point by reality, and utopian visions have no place in it. Moreover the common law of England is proof that there is a real distinction between legitimate and illegitimate power, that power can exist without oppression, and that authority is a living force in human conduct. English law, I discovered, is the answer to Foucault. Despite what many might consider his early preoccuptation with "high culture" and "aesthetics", Roger Scruton was also wise and pragmatic enough to recognize the intrinsic threat to civilized existence posed by Communism and the totalitarian Communist state....

Henry Regnery once said about that famous essay that everybody who read it, except for poor Hayek himself, came away thinking that Hayek really was, at heart, a conservative.

The free-market economist Milton Friedman has had to run the same gamut. He once protested Hayek's "conservative" label in a letter to Policy Review, and said that he considered both himself and Hayek to be "Old Whigs."

Friedman received this reply from the editor: "You too are a conservative. Sorry."

It is unfortunate that the same words can mean different things to different people; or perhaps it is the sign of a vibrant and growing language. Take the once noble word liberal: at one time these people denied the divine right of kings, mercantilism and championed the rights of the individual. Now it (generally) means leftist-statist. I use the word statist when describing those who see collective action through the state as a legitimate and primary vehichle for collective action. Who knows, in a half century, a statist may be perceived as one who advocates human liberty.

You're right: not only did the word "liberal" once mean all those things, it still does indicate an individualistic attitude in continental Europe. I heard a French anti-unionist describe herself as a "liberal," which she said is almost a dirty word today in France. The political views she labels "liberal" would be considered "conservative" in America.

The historian Jacques Barzun calls this The Great Switch: sometime in the 1890's, the onset of the welfare state in both Bismarck's Germany and Disraeli's Britain began to skew the meaning of the word "liberal": prior to that, a liberal was jealous of liberty and fearful of overly-concentrated government power, but no longer. The word has become corrupted, which is why I occasionally reference the old usage and call myself a "classical liberal." It's a good word and not one we should give up too easily.

In addition to "statist," I use the term "socialist," and distinguish it from "individualist." Although these terms aren't perfect, they are broad enough, I believe, to cover most of the people in their respective political camps.

Many "liberals" would recoil from being called "socialists," but I've noted that most of them can be persuaded to support almost any government intervention if it is couched in the right supporting language. They would deny that they intend to lead us to an all-powerful state, but their intentions don't matter: having supported many government interventions, they are hardly in a position to oppose the tide. After the cigarette lawsuits some years back, I told people that food would be targeted next. Many "liberals" would object to this idea, but it is now becoming respectable. They may not intend full-fledged socialism, but there is no question of the general direction that their policies are leading us in.

It is hard to communicate when one has to spend an inordinate amount of time defining the terms. This is one reason dialog among groups is so difficult. I agree with your assessment of the historical use of the word liberal and you are right that we should not give that one up. I too describe myself as a liberal in that I am looking toward the future, moving forward--progressing. OK I use socialist as well as statist, but it seems to me that socialists are necessarily statists and therefore statist is preferred because it captures the means of collective action of both the right and the left. My own take is individualist anarchism--that is sovereignty rests with each individual and not the state. When I talk with communist or socialist anarchists (generally but not always a waste of time)and we cannot agree on what agression is, it leads me to what we discussed earlier; that is how do we communicate when we do not agree on what words mean.

Although I had three years of Latin at a Jesuit highschool, I'm a little rusty; what does your screen name mean?

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