Roger Scruton: Purged

I see Prof. Sir Roger Scruton has been sacked by the Conservative government for saying George Soros is bad, Islamophobia is an imaginary problem, the sky is blue, water freezes at O centigrade, and a host of other offense notions.

I never met Scruton, though I used to have some dealings with the Salisbury Review. I read some of his essays and his book on Sexual Desire, which had some good things in it but comes out of a philosophical tradition that has done far more harm than good. In this sense he is a real conservative, clinging to rationalism and modernism to the bitter end.

Scruton has never been particularly offensive as a conservative--an analytical philosopher in the last phases of a useless philosophicxal tradition, an atheist who has grudgingly come to admit that Christianity ain't all bad, a nostalgic modernist with some sharp observations over the years. Overall, a decent man who has done his best to contribute to contemporary debate and careful not to break with the powers that be. He wasted much of his time, in my view (I was born jaded), but he is a man worthy of respect and decent treatment.

Mr. Scruton deserves the condolences of all decent conservatives and liberals, but, as a pop folk tune had it back in the 1960's, "It's a lesson too late in the learnin'..."