Conservative Ideology for Contemporary Times
This is a summary of the book “How to be a Conservative” — By Roger Scruton. This book presents the case for traditional conservatism in a world that seems inhospitable to its existence.
Key insights in this book:
- Scruton grew up in a Labour-supporting household, but events in the twentieth century influenced him to become a conservative.
- Conservatives believe that a society should be formed from the ground up rather than imposed from on high.
- Opening things up, not closing them down, creates opportunity.
- A healthy society revolves around the nation-state.
- Conservatives should support a free market economy, but with some qualifications.
- There is a distinction between old liberalism’s guarantees of rights and modern human rights.
- Multiculturalism thrives in Western countries when Western principles are upheld.
Who can benefit the most from this book:
- Those who walk on the right side of politics.
- Anyone interested in political philosophy.
- Leftists looking for an alternative perspective.
What am I getting out of it? Learn what it takes to think like a conservative.
Traditional conservatism is no longer popular. Traditionalist beliefs are viewed with scepticism as we turn to the future. Traditionalists are frequently considered as nostalgic and regressive in the West, which leans toward soft-left liberalism.
In such a climate, how can conservatives keep going? What value can they provide to the political discussion? You'll find out in this summary.
You'll discover how the author, Roger Scruton, became a conservative in response to the Left's worst mistakes of the twentieth century. You'll see, for example, how conservatives are the last bastion of the Enlightenment ideas that gave birth to contemporary democracy, and how their preferred economic system, the free market, is the only game in town.
- You’ll learn how the price system works.
- Why Edmund Burke loathed the French Revolution.
- And why the nation-state is an important aspect of a healthy society in this summary.
1. Scruton grew up in a Labour-supporting household, but events in the twentieth century influenced him to become a conservative.
How do you get from a working-class childhood in inner-city Manchester to a prestigious profession in national journalism and a lifelong conservative supporter? It isn't the most straightforward of travels. It all started when the author, Roger Scruton, observed his father, a longtime Labour voter, the campaign against suburban sprawl.
He'd always been a socialist, believing that the aristocracy had enslaved the working people and that a class struggle was necessary to free them. But he adored the English countryside, as well as the country's antique architecture and traditional ways of life and work. Modern housing, he believed, posed a threat to all of that.
Scruton's thinking was impacted by this aspect of his father's personality. He realized that conserving resources was always preferable, especially when the alternatives were so much worse.
Scruton came up in a Labour-voting family, but events in the twentieth century turned him conservative.
The riots in Paris in May 1968 were the second reason that influenced the author's decision to become a conservative. Scruton was in Paris at the time of the demonstrations. He felt a wave of rage as he witnessed students smash shop windows and attack police officers. These middle-class intellectuals, in his opinion, were rebelling against the very system that had permitted them to live such privileged lives.
After Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979, Scruton's conservatism got even stronger. In the United Kingdom, the 1970s were an era of decline. According to Scruton, the country, particularly its institutions and colleges, had succumbed to self-hating leftism, an ideology that dismissed all of Britain's achievements.
However, under Thatcher, the nation regained its confidence. She was a staunch supporter of free enterprise and individual liberty. While Scruton disagreed with Thatcher's rhetoric, he shared her underlying philosophy: that people must take responsibility for their own lives rather than blindly trust the state.
Scruton's ideas were also influenced by his travel to what was then Communist Czechoslovakia in 1979. Scruton was there to give a discussion, and when he looked across the room, he observed firsthand were radical leftist policies led.
Former professors, rabbis, authors, and psychoanalysts were among those who listened to him. All of these guys were now employed as coal stokers by the Communist regime. Authoritarians who wanted to control all elements of human life had suffocated their potential in each of them.
From that point forward, Scruton was devoted to the cause of liberty, which he believed was worth preserving at all costs.
2. Conservatives believe that a society should be formed from the ground up rather than imposed from on high.
Scruton has seen firsthand how the communist dream could devolve into an authoritarian nightmare while in Czechoslovakia. The country's leaders may have had the best of intentions, but what they built was a nightmarish world in which everything was monitored and analyzed, from work to family life. Everything was put to work in the socialist ideal's service.
However, it wasn't simply the Communists that made this error.
Right-wing thinkers in the United Kingdom fell into a similar trap under Thatcher. They, too, we're striving to construct society into a preset shape, just like the revolutionary socialists.
Individual citizens were converted to regime tools by Czech socialists. The capitalist ideologists in Britain attempted to reduce the entire society to market statistics.
However, societies do not operate in this manner. They're just too intricate to be reduced to any kind of ideological structure. No, they emerge organically from the ground up, shaped by far more than a political strategy.
This is the mindset of a true conservative.
The main point here is that conservatives think that a civilization should be formed from the ground up rather than imposed from on high.
Edmund Burke, a nineteenth-century British philosopher and MP, was one of the earliest champions of this theory. When Burke watched the French Revolution, he was outraged by the attempt to remake society from the top-down, destroying centuries of tradition in the process.
The rebels' top-down edicts, in his opinion, were terrible. He believed that civilizations required something distinctive, such as affection and loyalty.
He meant all relationships that take place in families, companies, schools, local groups, and societies when he said this. At this level, people actually connect. They learn the important, fundamental things that contribute to a cohesive society here, such as taking responsibility for one's own acts and helping others in need.
Rather than any top-down governmental vision, it is civil society that survives.
The demise of communist countries provides modern evidence for this. It is this grassroots community that has survived among the wreckage, not the policies of previous rulers.
The truth, according to the author, is that "purposeless" things like friendship and neighbourliness keep civilization going. Any attempt to impose an external goal on society would inevitably fail.
3. Opening things up, not closing them down, creates opportunity.
When the Communists took power in the twentieth century, one of the first things they did was shut down any civil organization that they didn't control. Choirs, theatre organizations, churches, walking clubs, discussion societies, and private schools were all outlawed.
They believed that groups like these may incite dissent. However, they believed that some, such as private schools and private members' clubs, provide benefits to those who join. This was incompatible with an egalitarian society.
Clubs and organisations can exist freely in a democratic society. Some, such as private schools and private members' clubs, do provide benefits. Naturally, this leads to claims of unequal treatment.
What is a conservative's approach to this issue? Her solution, rather than shutting them down, is to make them more accessible.
The main point here is that opportunity arises through opening things up rather than locking them down.
Consider the case of private schools. The majority of people feel that pupils who attend private schools benefit from them: they often have better tutors, fewer classes, and more resources. The Left's response to the discrepancy between private and public schools is to simply close them down.
Rich parents, on the other hand, will find other ways to give their children an advantage. They'll employ the best home tutors, or they'll buy residences in areas where superb public schools are located.
A restriction on private schools will only result in the obliteration of decades, if not centuries, of educational knowledge.
So, what's the answer? To make things more open. This would result in increased social mobility. In the case of private schools, for example, this can be accomplished by providing bursaries and vouchers to impoverished students.
Private clubs and associations, in general, the conservative maintains, are all-natural aspects of society. They should be permitted to exist for their own sake, as places that impart knowledge, provide pleasure, and foster social relationships.
As we stated in the last insight, the glue that keeps everything together in this organic, civic society, not top-down statism. And we do it at our peril if we set out to undermine that civilization.
4. A healthy society revolves around the nation-state.
Is nationalism turning into a pejorative term? We are increasingly associating it with the atrocities perpetrated in its name over the twentieth century. Consider the horrors committed by the Nazis or the ethnic cleansing that wreaked havoc on the Balkans.
Nationalism can indeed encourage unreasonable prejudices. Others may be persecuted because of their ethnicity, religion, or culture as a result of these views.
However, the author claims that there is a distinction between nationalism and a sense of belonging to a nation-state. The first is a potentially dangerous ideology, whereas the second is a natural and necessary attitude.
The fundamental point here is that a healthy society revolves around the nation-state.
In fact, we learn to cohabit with the many different individuals that live alongside us only through the nation-state.
In some ways, the nation-state is similar to a family. In a family, we may have disagreements and even develop divisions among family members. We quarrel when we have a disagreement — of course we do. But, in the end, we arrive at a solution that benefits the entire family – even if some of us disagree with it personally.
At the end of the day, we decide to stand shoulder to shoulder.
If a family wants to stay together, it must have a shared identity, a "we," that holds even when there are differences. The same may be said for society. In Western democracies, whether Christians or Muslims, socialists or capitalists, meat-eaters or vegetarians, it is this national "we" that bonds us together.
This shared identity must be founded on the secular nation-state rather than one of the many alternative possibilities. It can only succeed if it is inclusive in a manner that religious or ethnic identity cannot.
Countless compromises over time have resulted in the formation of the national identity. It brings people together who are very different from one another. It's also inclusive in this sense because a nation-state is open to everyone. It can include any ethnic, religious, or ideological minority.
As a result, rather than the far-harsh right's nationalism, conservatives embrace a kinder sense of belonging. They understand that we can only learn to live in harmony with our neighbours if we acknowledge our shared home.
5. Conservatives should support a free market economy, but with some qualifications.
Inequality is an unfortunate reality of modern life. There are many more people who have failed than those who have succeeded and amassed a personal fortune.
But what can we do about it? A socialist, on the other hand, would argue that we need to establish a central authority to regulate the economy. Its responsibility would be to guarantee that resources are distributed equally. This, socialists argue, will bring everyone up to the same level.
A conservative, on the other hand, believes otherwise. A free market society is the only one that makes sense to her.
The main point is that conservatives should support a free market economy — with some conditions.
So, why is it necessary to promote a free market?
The answer is that an economy cannot function without people being aware of each other's desires, needs, and resources. You simply cannot distribute resources accurately without this knowledge.
This problem has a perfect answer in the free market economy. This is the price mechanism, which determines resource distribution by combining the requirements of consumers and enterprises. The pricing of something - whether it's a product or a service – contains all of the necessary information. The free market is a system in which the most important data is held within the system itself; you can only get this knowledge by analyzing organic interactions between suppliers and purchasers.
Now consider a socialist economy, in which all prices are determined by a central authority. Because there is no market-based "pricing mechanism," this authority does not have access to this information. The system eventually fails because there is no way to precisely predict demand. Consider the long lines, empty shelves, and – yes – occasional gluts that afflicted the Soviet Union in its latter days. People either have too much of something or struggle to get what they need, which is at the heart of the socialist economy.
The free market should be defended by conservatives. There are, however, some caveats. The free market cannot lead to a stable society on its own. Something else must exist, something that assures that people pay the price for their activities rather than just reap the advantages.
Problems arise when there isn't that extra "something." Consider the subprime mortgage problem, which contributed to the 2008 financial disaster. It occurred mostly as a result of lending firms and investment banks failing to pay the costs of their conduct. Such conduct is rash and unjustifiable.
As a result, in order for a free market to function, it must be restrained by the rule of law. That's not all, though. As we observed in a previous insight, society functions best when moral ideals grow from the bottom up. The economy, too, is in a state of flux.
6. There is a distinction between old liberalism's guarantees of rights and modern human rights.
John Locke, an English philosopher from the seventeenth century, campaigned for what he called "natural rights." The idea of a "natural law" arose from an ancient belief that there is some type of universal code that applies to everyone everywhere.
Natural rights, according to Locke, were supposed to provide each of us sovereignty over our own lives. They also promise mutual consent to enter into agreements and withdraw from them.
Locke is widely regarded as the founder of liberalism. He realized that society can only function if people have control over their own lives. What is the best way to accomplish this sovereignty? Guaranteed safety from external coercion is crucial. To put it another way, liberty.
All conservative ideology is based on this concept of human rights as liberties. Human rights, on the other hand, have taken on a completely new meaning today.
The main point here is that there is a distinction between rights guaranteed by old liberalism and rights protected by modern human rights.
Let's return to Locke's concept of rights. His strategy is based on a concept known as negative freedom. You forbid compulsion - that's our negative – and instead, guarantee people's freedom. This notion, however, does not address all of the world's injustices.
Egalitarians found this difficult to accept, so they decided to improve on it.
To do this, they began amending international treaties. New articles have been added to these documents that ask states to execute a positive duty.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights, for example, states that citizens must be allowed to "grow their personalities freely." It continues by ensuring the right to employment, recreation, and good quality of living.
These are all claims, not rights, from a conservative perspective. They can be used to ensure that those who don't deserve help get it. For example, a criminal may be able to avoid deportation by citing the European Convention on Human Rights' "right to family life."
Such assertions have the potential to undermine the legal system's basic purpose. Let's pretend that a good human rights lawyer succeeds in court over the other party. There is no compromise or reconciliation. Sure, a person has trumped the government, but he has also trumped public policy that was designed with the greater interest in mind.
This is obviously incorrect for conservative thinkers.
7. Multiculturalism thrives in Western countries when Western principles are upheld.
Many different cultures, religions, and races coexist in the West. Cities in the Western United States are diverse and cosmopolitan. The United States, which was built on waves of immigration, is a model of successful multiculturalism.
In truth, it is the West's Enlightenment traditions that have made multiculturalism so effective. They've established a secular, civic society in which all people are welcome, regardless of their racial, religious, or familial origins.
On the other hand, there are people on the left who forget what a wonderful achievement this is. They are attempting to discredit these Enlightenment traditions. Without these traditions, the author claims, we would not be able to live in such a free and peaceful society.
The main point is that multiculturalism in Western countries works best when Western values are upheld.
Since the mid-twentieth century, there has been a trend to dismiss and even destroy the Enlightenment's achievements. The attacks on reason and objectivity, two important pillars of the Enlightenment movement, are the most egregious examples of this. Thinkers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida were at the forefront of these attacks, deconstructing ideas that the Enlightenment had taken for granted, such as logical thought and progress, in their own unique ways.
Then, in tandem with this trend, it's become acceptable in colleges and other organizations to denounce the West while remaining unjudgmental of other cultures. Those who support Western civilisation are frequently accused of racism. They are rumoured to be imperialists who believe that other races are inferior to their own. This argument, however, has a weakness. Culture is not the same as race, as the author points out.
Despite this, the accusations continue to pour in. Traditionalists are finding it increasingly difficult to criticize repugnant cultural traditions such as forced marriage, female circumcision, and "honour" killings because campaigners are vociferous and relentless. Those who speak out risk losing their university positions or being socially excluded.
So, what can a conservative thinker say in response? Well, a conservative realizes that you can’t construct a coherent community on repudiating a complete cultural inheritance. That will only breed resentment and estrangement.
Conservatives must therefore safeguard the Enlightenment's legacy. We rely on this shared culture, which includes its laws and liberties. And it is this culture that has attracted people to the West in the first place.
