For the conservative, family and society are prior to government, and therefore government exists to protect these institutions

What it means to be a conservative

by Holly Hamilton-Bleakley

Roger Scruton’s new book, How to Be a Conservative has come at a timely moment. With a general election looming in 2015 in the UK, and Republicans here in the US preparing for 2016, it’s an important time for conservatives on both sides of the pond to reflect together on what just what it might mean to be a conservative, and what their aims, as conservatives, should be.

And Scruton’s book gives plenty of food for thought. He draws on his experiences as an academic, as the son of a working class socialist, and as an activist in the former eastern block countries to weave a fascinating picture of the basic tenets of conservatism. Part memoir, part philosophical analysis, and part common sense, Scruton has written that most engaging of books, where a philosophy is set forth which has been informed by life experience, and life experience is interpreted in light of philosophical ideas.

Having been raised by a socialist, Scruton is quick to point out his father’s socialism sat side by side with a love of English liberty, the ‘freedom to say what you think and live as you will’, which the English ‘have defended over centuries.’ Yet, even as a young man Scruton could see that socialism was a ‘dream’. And later, when he found himself involved in the former eastern bloc he reports that he ‘learned to see socialism in another way – not as a dream of idealists, but as a real system of government, imposed from above and maintained by force.’ Socialism, Scruton argues, is based upon a ‘desire to control society in the name of equality, which carries with it a contempt for human freedom.

It is exactly this ‘top-down’ approach characteristic of socialism that Scruton contrasts again and again with conservatism, which he maintains is about ‘society shaped from below, by traditions that have grown from our natural need to associate.’ For Scruton, this is civil society – comprised of families, clubs, schools, work places, church, etc., where ‘people learn to interact as free beings, taking responsibility for their actions and accounting to their neighbours’. And in an important way, this civil society ‘built from below’ is a pre-political one, in the sense that our political order depends upon civil society in order to work, but cannot createcivil society itself.

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