Roger Scruton, for all he calls himself conservative, is just another reactionary

What too many folk think conservatism is about

 Yet again, we are allowing people who are not conservatives to frame a definition of conservatism that is essentially reactionary. This problem is not helped, I think by reactionaries who define themselves as conservatives.

I suddenly realized I was on the other side. What I saw was an unruly mob of self-indulgent middle-class hooligans. When I asked my friends what they wanted, what were they trying to achieve, all I got back was this ludicrous Marxist gobbledegook. I was disgusted by it, and thought there must be a way back to the defence of western civilization against these things. That’s when I became a conservative. I knew I wanted to conserve things rather than pull them down.

Roger Scruton, beginning with this entirely reactionary statement, has become for some the acme of modern conservative thought, a definitional bulwark of resistance to those who want (by inference) to destroy 'western civilization'. I consider this definition of conservatism - as somehow peculiar to western culture - deeply troubling and, as sure as night follows day, such a definition leads to racism. Not that I think Scruton is a racist but rather that his words, the focus on a perceived superiority of that 'western civilization', valorise the idea that other races and places are somehow less good - inferior.

The reason I began with a concern I've expressed before - that non-conservatives are allowed to define conservatism - is because it gives tendentious left-wing writers like Jonathan Portes the space to create a definition of conservatism founded on reaction rather than preservation. People such as Scruton - and Enoch Powell, another reactionary who did immense damage to the conservative idea - are caught in the myth that there's a unique superiority to the thread of thinking running from what they call classical civilisation - Greece and Rome - through to a comfortable leather chair in a book-lined Oxford study.

It's not that Scruton has nothing to say or even that he should not be appointed to an unpaid public position - it's entirely clear that the New Statesman set out to get him and achieved that aim - but rather that, if the only conservative thinking we can find is from antediluvian and reactionary writers then our movement has a problem. If our ideas are defined solely by a fear of the barbarians - Muslims, Marxists, enemies of civilisation - at our gates, if we have nothing positive to say then we stop being conservatives and become mere reactionaries trapped in a sort of cultural Rorke's Drift.

The central ideas of conservatism - stability, family, community, personal responsibility, duty, a sense of place - are not peculiar to western civilisation but have been features of human society since its beginnings. Those ideas are just as familiar to people in China, Angola, Arabia or Java as they are in England or France, they are not off-shoots of 'judeo-christian' traditions (it's striking that we say this rather than 'People of the Book' because that would mean us recognising Muslims as part of the same tradition).

When we - conservatives - are asked the question 'what are you conserving', we need an answer that isn't about race, religion or culture but rather is about the things that led to the betterment of our lives. Crucially, this means that we must distance ourselves from reactionary politics so as to allow us to make common cause with others who see the truth - that it's an open society, free markets and a strong bourgeoisie that need preserving. And that, when the left define us as reactionaries, they push us into their cultural camp - opposed to choice and liberty, in favour of limits, restrictions, controls and the domination of a government elite. Where we differ from classical liberals is in believing that community, family and allegiance to place are things that need preserving too.

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