"~The real problem, in America, Britain, Canada, Oz, NZ, is not the left, who know what they want and are serious about getting it, but the pansy right. It's easy to mock AOC and Justin and Jacinta Ardern, but all they're doing is sailing full steam ahead for their desired utopia. The right, who profess to disdain the final destination, nevertheless follow along, albeit at a more desultory rate of knots.Sir Roger Scruton
We see this routinely in their urge to "distance" themselves: In Washington, as I mentioned the other day, House Republicans ostentatiously distanced themselves from their colleague Steve King, because in an ill-advised interview with The New York Times he appeared to endorse "white supremacist" concepts such as "western civilization". For some of us, it's hard to see the point of a conservatism that distances itself from western civilization.
The same fate has now befallen the most thoughtful and serious of living conservative philosophers, Roger Scruton. I have a modest acquaintance with Sir Roger, both personal (he's married to a friend of a friend) and professional: We once appeared in a debate moderated by none other than Margaret Thatcher. Mrs T obviously adored Roger and reckoned I was there just for the cheap laughs.
But that was then, and this is Theresa May's Tory Party. So Roger Scruton gave an interview to The New Statesman, which is left-wing but once employed him as its wine critic. But that was then, etc. At the new New Statesman he fell into the hands of one of those lefties whose goal in the interview is to talk to you for two hours and then pluck three partial quotes uttered twenty-five minutes apart that destroy your career and get you banished from public life. In this case, it was various Scrutonisms on China, Islam, Hungary and homosexuality, all of which are worth thinking about seriously.
But, as I say, that's the leftie hack's objective, and you can't blame him for achieving it. Douglas Murray, quite rightly, is more disgusted by the craven pile-on of so-called conservatives:
Within four hours of Eaton tweeting out his misquotations of Britain's most prominent living philosopher, the housing minister (James Brokenshire) announced that Scruton had been dismissed with immediate effect from his role as Chairman of the 'Building Better Building Beautiful Commission'. The sacking from this unpaid, advisory position came because of these 'unacceptable comments'.
James Brokenshire, "Communities Secretary" and Fake Conservative. With rightwingers like these, who needs wet floorcloths?
What's the point of James Brokenshire? He is the so-called "Communities Secretary" and was formerly a most undistinguished Northern Ireland Secretary. But, more importantly, what's the point of the Conservative government in which he sits? Roger Scruton is a humane and decent person: He wrote a novel about the girls of Rotherham, which none of the more fashionable literary types could be bothered with. He thinks seriously about everything from "Islamophobia" to social dancing. If there is "no place for the likes of Scruton" in public life, then there is no place for conservatism either. Douglas Murray again:
Even today the chances are that when you show up at any institution which has a position in the gift of the government the person still in charge there will be someone who used to write press releases for Tony Blair some two decades ago. And in nine years what have the Conservatives managed? Nothing. Or almost nothing. They pat themselves on the back for their heroism in a single successful appointment, only then – as Brokenshire showed today – to reverse and retreat when a left-wing magazine pumps inaccurate quotes onto social media.
There are many reasons to feel contempt for the modern Conservative party. Personally I can see no reason, after the fiasco they have made of Brexit, to ever vote for them again.
Indeed. I wish Douglas were correct that in nine years the Tories have managed merely to accomplish nothing. On everything from Brexit to Scruton to their new Internet clampdown they are making things worse."
Don't miss Douglas Murray's take, in The Spectator, on the scandalous sacking of Sir Roger Scruton:
"So the New Statesman decided to interview Sir Roger Scruton. Perhaps there are those who think that Scruton should not have agreed to be interviewed by the New Statesman, the left-wing magazine being unlikely to conduct a fair interview. But Scruton was the magazine’s wine columnist for many years, and under the editorship of Jason Cowley the magazine has been a slightly fairer and less battily leftwards publication than it was of old.
But today the magazine’s deputy editor, George Eaton, took to social media to announce the results of what he is parading as a ‘gotcha’ interview. The interview – which Eaton conducted himself – was, he promised, positively crammed full with ‘a series of outrageous remarks’. Eaton later posted a picture of himself drinking champagne to celebrate the fate of his interviewee, with the caption “The feeling when you get right-wing racist and homophobe Roger Scruton sacked as a Tory government adviser.” Eaton has since deleted the picture. Here it is."
George Eaton of The New Statesman, Deputy Editor of that rag and asshole superdeluxe. Sir Roger Scruton made the mistake of thinking leftists can be reasonable and trustworthy. I am no world class philosopher, but that's an error I would not have made.
"So what are the ‘outrageous remarks’? It appeared that Scruton had said that Islamophobia is ‘a propaganda word invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to stop discussion of a major issue’. Which is true. He also said that ‘Anybody who doesn’t think that there’s a Soros empire in Hungary has not observed the facts.’ A fact which is also true. Obviously since the British Labour party became a party of anti-Semites it has become exceptionally important to pretend that anti-Semitism is equally prevalent on the political right in Britain and that to criticise any of the actions of George Soros is in fact simply to indulge in anti-Semitism equivalent to that rolling through the Labour party. A very useful play for the political left, but wholly untrue. Anyway, I say ‘it appears’ that Scruton said this because there seem to be a few journalistic problems here.
Though Eaton says that Scruton said the above I am not confident that this is so. For Eaton – who used to be the Statesman’s political editor – appears to have a somewhat Johann Hari-esque way with quotes. He claims, for instance, that what Scruton said about Soros was somehow a comment ‘on Hungarian Jews’. As though Scruton had attacked all Hungarian Jews, rather than one very influential and political man who happens to be a Hungarian Jew."
To get back to Iowa Republican Steve King, who got a James Brokenshire treatment at the hands of American 'conservative' Mitch McConnell in that he was removed in January from the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees for having committed the unspeakable crime of asking,
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
... for the caravans of hundreds of thousands of Latinos, heading to the United States of America from every crime ridden dirt poor hellhole in Central America, and the mass movements of Africans and muslims from African and islamic shitholes, heading to Europe, the issue seems clear: for them, White societies apparently seem immeasurably more superior to their own. And I will now give you a chap who sheds some light on how that superiority came to be:
MFBB.
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