Articles

Monuments to the victims of fascism exist everywhere, but communism’s victims are hardly remembered at all. 

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, it is fitting to ask whether we have learned what it tells us about its ideological root. Do we now appreciate that the Marxist ideology destroys legal order, political opposition and human rights? Do we have some idea of the death toll that has in every case followed the triumph of the ‘vanguard party’? Do we have an inkling of the human cost of collectivisation, or of what the gulag meant in terms of the humiliation and destruction of its victims?

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Are human beings fundamentally different from other animals? Roger Scruton argues that we are, and that we need to think about ourselves in non-biological terms. He explains these ideas in conversation with Nigel Warburton.

Listen to Roger Scruton on Human Nature

Nigel Warburton will be in conversation with Roger Scruton about Human Nature at 11am on Saturday 2nd September in the Philosophy section of Blackwell's bookshop, Oxford. Free event, all welcome.

"European society", says Sir Roger Scruton, "is rapidly jettisoning its Christian heritage and has found nothing to put in its place save the religion of human rights".

But, he argues, this new "religion" delivers one-sided solutions since rights favour the person who can claim them - whatever the moral reasons for opposing them.

He says Europe needs to rediscover its Christian roots.

Listen to the podcast HERE

You can download the transcript HERE.

Roger Scruton looks at the impact of Harry Potter on our world view.

"People are starting to live in a kind of cyber-Hogwarts", he says, "a fantasy world in which goods are simply obtained by needing them, and then asking some future Prime Minister to wave the magic wand".

Listen to the podcast HERE

Roger Scruton asks: "What does the Tory Party really stand for?"

He says the Conservative party at present is muddling along without a philosophy.

But he argues that, far from being the 'nasty party', the most fundamental belief underpinning Conservative policies historically is the idea of responsibility towards others.

Producer: Adele Armstrong. Listen to the Podcast HERE

Read the transcript HERE

On Tuesday afternoon, Roger spoke to Jay Nordingler. You can listen to the Q & A here. 

I have been reading a collection of intriguing articles entitled What Matters Most by the late Sir Chris Woodhead, a courageous and outspoken defender of real knowledge in a sphere where knowledge is not always given its due. Woodhead was a highly cultivated man, a former teacher of English, who was appointed Chief Inspector of Schools in 1994 during the government of Sir John Major. His appointment inaugurated a period of conflict between the Inspectorate and the collection of leftist educationists that Woodhead called ‘the Blob’ (after the 1958 horror film about an ever-expanding and all-consuming amoeba from outer space). The name, Woodhead writes, ‘captures the inert mindlessness and sullen, rubbery resistance of the professors and quangocrats and officials and consultants who make up the educational establishment’.

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James Delingpole interviewed Roger in June and here is the podcast. 

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/delingpole-james-delingpole/id1163810679?mt=2

For as long as there have been politicians, they have lied, fabricated and deceived. The manufacture of falsehood has changed over time, as the machinery becomes more sophisticated. Straight lies give way to sinuous spin, and open dishonesty disappears behind Newspeak and Doublethink. However, even if honesty is sometimes the best policy, politics is addressed to people’s opinions, and the manipulation of opinion is what it is all about. Plato held truth to be the goal of philosophy and the ultimate standard that disciplines the soul. But even he acknowledged that people cannot take very much of it, and that peaceful government depends on ‘the noble lie’.

Read the full article here.

The ‘we’ of the nation-state binds people together, builds an important legacy of social trust and blunts the sharp edges of globalization.
There is a respectable opinion among educated people that nations are no longer relevant. Their reasoning runs roughly as follows:

We live in an interconnected world. Globalization and the internet have created new networks of belonging and new forms of social trust, by which borders are erased and old attachments vaporized. Yes, we have seen the growth of nationalism in Europe, the Brexit vote in the U.K. and the election of the populist Donald Trump, but these are signs of reactionary sentiments that we should all have outgrown. The nation-state was useful while it lasted and gave us a handle on our social and political obligations. But it was dangerous too, when inflamed against real or imaginary enemies.

In any case, the nation-state belongs in the past, to a society in which family, job, religion and way of life stay put in a single place and are insulated against global developments. Our world is no longer like that, and we must change in step with it if we wish to belong.

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