A Politics of Home with Jacob Rees-Mogg and Robert P. George

hello my name is fisher darderian and i am the executive director of the roger scrutin legacy foundation it is my pleasure to welcome you to a politics of home roger scrutin and anglo-american conservatism for those of you joining us for the first time the roger scruton legacy foundation was founded in august of last year following his passing in january a number of sir roger's former colleagues students friends and supporters came together and decided that there ought to be an institution dedicated to furthering and honoring the life and legacy of this great british philosopher through the conservation care and continuation of humane wisdom and culture in the western tradition the foundation seeks to establish scrutin's legacy and support those around the world dedicated to a scrutonian philosophical vision and as we take stock of scrutin's legacy and explore the many facets of it one of the great themes that comes out of it is his political thought and in particular his conservatism i'm pleased to say we have two very formidable guides today through this topic uh the right honorable jacob rees-mogg and professor robert p george the moderator for today's discussion will be michael knowles michael is an author and american political commentator he is the host of the daily wires the michael knowles show and prageru's the book club as well as the co-host of verdict with ted cruz knowles is the author of the forthcoming book speechless controlling words controlling minds michael over to you thank you very much fisher with that kind introduction i will in turn introduce our uh speakers the right honourable jacob rees-mogg is the member of parliament for northeast somerset currently serves as leader of the house of commons and lord president of the council jacobs has served as mp of northeast somerset since 2010 when he was first elected to parliament and he has many supporters on both sides of the atlantic i can say this as a yankee our other speaker today is robert p george the mccormick professor of jurisprudence and director of the james madison program in american ideals and institutions at princeton university robert has served as chairman on the u.s commission on international religious freedom on the president's council on bioethics as a presidential appointee to the u.s commission on civil rights as the u.s member of unesco's world commission on the ethics of science and technology robert has written too many books and been on too many boards possibly to count as for me my only qualification for being here is my deep admiration for both of these gentlemen as well of course as for roger scrutin and i suppose that is fitting given the topic at hand which is the politics of home affection and belonging and and at this very moment we're facing in britain renewed attacks on the crown from erstwhile members and representatives of that institution in the united states we are seeing the mainstreaming of the toppling of our founding fathers it would seem that at this moment none of our countrymen seem to love our home very much there doesn't seem to be much support for maintaining that politics of home uh jacob since you are outnumbered on this panel two to one by the yankees perhaps we should start with you how do we recover a politics of home uh given all of these challenges um well first of all thank you very much for having me because um roger scrutin was a truly wonderful man very important conservative thinker who i actually first met in the late 1980s when he came to speak when i was a school boy and he impressed everybody then and had the courage to speak up for what we all believe in and make the intellectual case for conservatism the tories have always been known as the stupid party and roger scrutin was always able to prove that we weren't as stupid as all that at least we had some people who could do some thinking uh for us but how do we get back this idea of home the idea that our nation's your nation and mine now i'm more american you may think my grandmother my late father's late mother uh was an american citizen um they will be horrified here that she got her vote back in the 80s and used it um in her 80s to vote for jimmy carter which um i was only seven at the time so i deny all liability um but to get back this idea of home i think we just need to understand where our voters are that i think you saw this in the 2019 general election in the cons in the uk when the conservatives did very well in the so-called red wall seats and actually lots of voters who had baited labor all their life rejected the socialist idea that you should dislike your own country and they said well no that's not right we love our own country we value its history we understand our traditions and that's where we get strength from and so i think we should emulate roger and be bold and proud of our beliefs and express them rather than buying into a slightly bullying wokish agenda robert uh yes first let me say uh that it's always a joy to be celebrating the life of uh our great friend uh roger scrutin uh what a hero he was not only to folks on jacob's side of the atlantic but for those of us on the uh american side as well uh he helped to deepen our understanding of the things in the world and in life that are most important a family home faith friendship things that we do and probably should more or less take for granted but which do come under strain and under attack from time to time as they are in our own time and the deepening of our understanding helps us to stand by them when the times get tough and it's a special privilege to be with you michael and with jacob rees-mogg who's witness to the most important things in life to the sanctity of human life itself to marriage and the family to the common good is something that i've admired now for uh for many years we haven't met in person and this is our first opportunity really to to meet at all but i consider it a privilege jacob to be uh on this zoom broadcast with you and celebrating our mutual friend our late mutual friend our beloved friend um roger scrutin uh when i think of roger i think of another dear british friend we've lost recently who was also a friend of rogers and that is of course the late rabbi lord jonathan sachs the former uh chief rabbi who like roger scrutin they were much more alike than people i think recognize like roger scrutin put the emphasis on deepening our understanding of and thus our commitment to an appreciation of the most important things in life the things that really matter family and faith and home and friendship and integrity and courage the things that matter far above wealth and power and influence and press the asian status and those kinds of things which are not bad in themselves but are secondary in value derivative of instrumental value and not comparable to the things that are primary and not derivative and of intrinsic and not merely instrumental value i think the first point that roger would make if he were here in responding to your question michael so i'll just try to channel him a little bit is that the love of home in one's own the love of family the love of country come naturally to us as human beings we are built to love family and home we we get into tension right there's there's nothing quite as difficult as being in a family it brings headaches and problems uh my my friend mitch dector has often pointed this out uh but it's very natural to love one's family after all we come into the world not as atomistic isolated individuals some folks on the libertarian extreme seem to miss this we don't come in as what michael sandel calls unencumbered selves we come in already being born into a family and into a community of which that family is typically uh itself a member uh and often of course more often than not into a faith the the the christian faith or the jewish faith or what or or what have you so we come connected encumbered uh encumbered encumbered in ways that give us rights and give us duties uh but also in ways that make our lives rich and meaningful so um how do we recover that well we remind people that there's nothing artificial or fake about loving one's own it's nothing to be ashamed of loving one's country loving one's family loving one's community feeling a special obligation there's nothing wrong about that there's nothing unusual about that it's the human condition it's the human experience and it helps us to fulfill our natures as human beings we can't get along we can't be all that we are supposed to be all that we can be without being integrated into a family a community a country of faith and so forth and with all the blessings that come from those things come obligations including the obligation to serve protect and defend home and family and faith and country it was not wrong it was right when british soldiers and american soldiers and australian soldiers and canadian soldiers were conscripted into the armed forces to defeat nazi germany and toast joe's japan putting their own lives on the line sacrificing their lives for the defense of home and country because it was their own because it was good yes we're fighting for democracy we're fighting for civil liberty we're fighting for important values that's all part of the picture an important part of the picture that they were also fighting for their own for home for their nations for their communities for their families it's natural and it's good you know this this notion that we have some bond to our countrymen that we like them because they are our countrymen we like our country because it is our country i know that uh roger had written i think now six or seven years ago about the he'd written about it before as well about the importance of confession and forgiveness to a civilization we all keep touching on this religious question and what roger wrote is that confession is so important to civilization because we have to be able to admit when we are wrong and we have to sacrifice our pride and we have to be able to forgive and sacrifice our resentment and in this exchange we can grow together we can live with one another we can get over all of those problems that occur in families and occur in nations and it would seem to me that he was foreshadowing he was prophesying the the phenomenon that we now refer to as cancer cultures we see a breakdown of both confession and forgiveness jacob uh since this is occurring not just in the united states it's happening in in britain as well is there is there some aspect of this confessional this forgiveness that uh that is tearing at the social fabric there it's a very important question um because the council culture is very dangerous that it fundamentally undermines free speech and free speech is our greatest safeguard ultimately against tyranny because it allows us to object to bad government or bad decisions being made by officialdom in whatever way that they are made and it allows thought to develop and to evolve so council culture is fundamentally wrong and risky for society and you're right about confession that conversion is a great strength because to understand what you've done wrong in the past is a means of improving for the future um and so you then lead on from confession to forgiveness and what that leads to and that can become very strengthening that once people have the cleansing of forgiveness then they can build further and then they can lose the shame of what they've done wrong in the past and i think this is very important in looking at our nation's histories that all nations have done things wrong in the past but that doesn't mean that they should um lie in their beds weeping currently it means that they should get on with things and try and do better and focus on what they've done well in the past and then you can build and you can seek newer heights and i think the problem with council culture is it's basically saying look we did wrong things in the past they were so terrible that we must beat ourselves up forever because although we are repenting we don't recognize forgiveness and so from what you're saying i think absolutely spot on you need both to come together so that you can make society workable and livable robert somehow you have taught for years and years at one of the most prestigious campuses in the united states not exactly hotbeds of conservatism i believe you hold a chair once held by woodrow wilson who no doubt would roll over in his grave of being invoked in this sort of a conversation you have not been canceled and and so to what degree is this phenomenon real to what degree does it threaten the politics of home from from your advantage oh it's real and they're real victims uh we don't have to guess about this i mean there are people who have been canceled their careers have been ruined their professional lives have been ruined their personal lives have been uh ruined because of sometimes false allegations sometimes true allegations of things that are actually not offenses uh people have been canceled because they've said the wrong thing the quote wrong thing unquote or the right thing in the quote wrong unquote way uh or sometimes and this is especially insidious where they have not said something that they're supposed to say it's a sort of formal or increasingly i'm sorry informal or increasingly formal imposition of what amounts to loyalty testing unless you say the magic words that you're supposed to say you make the commitment that you're most supposed to make to whatever the the woke value system is you get canceled for that as well so it's a real thing but michael if i can come back to roger something that jacob said just triggered this reminder in my head the very heart of roger's conservatism was the belief that many if not most of the important things in life the most important things of life are things that we didn't create by thinking it through and deciding we're going to build the structure rather many of the most important things probably most of the most important things of life are things that grew up organically over time by a process of trial and error and for the most important things that works much better than trying to create an architectural plan or a set of designs in your mind and impose it this is where the great revolutionary ideologies have all gone wrong marxism fascism you name it they've all gone wrong imagining we can create the utopia we'll get the design in our heads and then we'll impose it and of course if we have to break a few heads well you can't break an egg you can't make an omelet without breaking breaking eggs that's their story roger says no the most important things are things we can't design and build we have to let them grow up organically we have to play our role in the organic development of them we're not passive we play a role but it's the organic development over time by trial and error that builds the truly good things the things that are worth having the things that are most humane that is correspond to the human uh now the other point roger makes so critical and it was this insight that made him realize he himself was a conservative in 1968 when he looked out the window of his flat in paris and saw the revolutionaries in the street and that was the insight that important valuable things take a long time and a great deal of effort the work of many hands to build that they can be torn down in virtually an instant it's easy to tear them down it's quick these things that it takes time and effort and trial and error to build so we've got to be very cautious and the spirit of cancer culture the spirit of woke ideology just another one of these ideologies it is actually pulling from past ideologies but it's just another one of these ideologies that imagines we can start the world anew today and do a much better job we can get rid of the institutions and understandings and principles that have grown up over time organically by trial and error that we've come to embrace that we've shaped that we've reformed we can get rid of all that because it's tainted and we can replace it with a world made new today right this is this is what causes the french revolutionaries to reject the entire past and and and remake uh notre dame cathedral as a temple of temple of reason well that quickly leads to what the terror and the guillotine every single time and if we human beings have not learned our lesson by now i don't know when we're going to learn it but we've got to stop this nonsense we have to stop this canceled culture and we have to oppose with the full force of our hearts and minds the ideology that generates and drives it yeah you know it seems to me that every single day uh things that rogers said years ago seem to be proven more and more true and exactly on your point robert on this sort of destruction of what we're seeing all around us how quick it is to destroy how with the impulses for this roger wrote about two different visions of government one vision of government as a form of representation sounds good to me another vision of government as a form of war and you know politics is a blood sport in even the best circumstances but one can see these two different visions in conflict uh jacob i i at least speaking for myself on this side of the atlantic seems that you all are much more civilized over there than we are uh to to uh which degree would you say you find your own government these days which vision of government well first of all i'd like to go back to what robert was saying because i think it's so fundamentally important and you see this in the development of the british constitution which fascinates me that almost everything important that has happened in the british constitution is not something that is planned but was something that happened to meet an immediate political crisis and that doesn't matter whether it's magna carta or the establishment of the house of commons uh or the um glorious revolution or the great reform bill all of these are things that happen in response to a crisis and they build one upon another and this ties in very much with what both roger thought and what edmund burke thought that you needed to have an evolution you needed to develop things but based on your traditions then that's fundamental to creating a stable and well-ordered society that avoids things like the terror it's that um recognizing that yes there are things that need to be changed but change them when they have to change don't necessarily do it precipitately and keep the things that remain underneath it and then you get that happy evolution that constitutionally has been fundamental as regards um politics in this country i think you're kind to say that american politics is much more brutal than uk politics i i think we both have our moments if i may put it that way i i think the brexit debate got quite brutal in this country but that was to my mind in standing up for um the people and i know it's easier to bandy this phrase about but in a representative democracy sometimes people focus too much on the representative person too little on the democracy bit that is to say they feel that they are part of a magic cast of an elite who must tell people what to do and how to live their lives and every so often they need to be reminded that they're there as representatives of genuine people who have views that are valid views and not ones that should be sniffed at uh and you you you have um i think the term the flyover states to indicate those on either side of your great country who look rather sniffly down their nose at people and i think we disparage them as coming from islington but it's broadly the same idea that they think they know best and they shouldn't listen to electorates and ultimately it's electorates that matter and need to be represented and sometimes you have to be quite forceful in putting the arguments for uh for one for better word the people robert since you uh run the james madison program as surely uh in the united states uh our government appears to have deviated from that uh that plan somewhere perhaps in precisely the way that jacob is describing could you comment on that well yes i mean the constitution of the united states uh reflected the fact that our revolution was not a french revolution it was not uh a revolution that meant to start the world anew uh the next day it was as some historians have labeled it a conservative revolution a revolution aimed at restoring rights that the then colonists believed had been violated or abrogated or taken away by the crown or by parliament um so while it was a reforming uh cause of reforming campaign and in that sense a revolution revolution it wasn't a radical revolution uh like the bolshevik revolution or the french revolution or anything of the kind it's a charter and it has new ideas the idea of the national government as a government of delegated and enumerated powers but it also retains some core ideas the ideas of states as governments of general jurisdiction that hold plenary authority exercising what we have again from our british heritage police powers to protect public health safety and morals and to advance the uh the common good so uh our constitution protects historic rights such as free speech freedom of the press uh freedom of assembly and so forth uh due process of law as amended after the civil war it includes of course a very important principle of equal protection uh it's the whole system is founded on the idea that we have divinely given god-given natural rights the founding principle of the declaration of independence as we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness of course we are not a monarchy we are a republic we opted for that we had a perfectly good candidate to be the monarch after the successful revolution in george washington uh he didn't want the job a lot of people wanted him to have it anyway but he uh he decided he didn't want it so we took the uh took the republican uh course but it's important to see that this was not any uh example of wokism in its own time and it was it wasn't remotely like the french revolution to categorize those two together even though they came within a short distance of each other chronologically is i think to make a uh to make a fundamental mistake the the free speech principle here is under assault there's no question about it it's under assault in our broad society and it's under assault in the very particular places where it's perhaps most important and those are institutions of learning you cannot whether we're talking about uh elementary in middle school and high school or whether we're talking about colleges and universities you cannot have a truth-seeking enterprise you cannot have genuine teaching that doesn't just reduce to indoctrination if you don't have the principle of freedom of speech in place jacob was right to note this a moment ago it's critical as jacob said it's our it's our bulwark against tyranny that's certainly true it's also a condition of truth seeking it's a condition of communicating to each new generation uh the intellectual capacities and the intellectual virtues that they need to be truth seekers and lifelong learners the assault on freedom of speech in the academy is especially noteworthy not simply because i happen to live my life in the academy i happen to be a professor it should be noteworthy and a matter of concern to every parent in the com whether you're a plumber or you you you are a hedge fund manager or you're an insurance salesman if you've got kids or grandkids if you have a stake in the future you should be concerned about free speech in education including in higher education because it's a necessary condition of the success of the truth seeking and teaching enterprise uh of course uh jacob care to comment well i so completely agree with that and i'm actually very jealous of the um the us constitution's protection of free speech which is considerably greater than the protection that we have in the united kingdom we have it by uh tradition and long-standing habit but you have it with an absoluteness that i think is is very valuable and i think i i i'm love the american constitution i think the uk constitution and the american constitution the two most beautiful constitutions that mankind has ever produced and they have a corresponding flaw in each of them which i don't need to go into but i think the u.s constitution is such a wonderful example of what both rogers greetings was talking about and edmund burke understood which is that individuals have rights and have freedoms and have liberties which must be protected but there is no contradiction between that and the development of a society and a society that is stable and works the individuals and i think this is really fundamental to rogers understanding was obviously very much built on a on a berkean view and that individual freedoms are actually protected by having a well-established and fair state which the american constitution of course provides and the british constitution in my view does as well and i i so agree uh with robert about free speech i i think if you take away free speech um the other pillars of constitution which are democracy the rule of law and the rights of property collapse why because you don't have the ability to speak out to protect them and as as robert was saying you can't seek truth because you have to accept the truth that you are told by the powerful state and that i'm afraid uh leads ultimately to corruption uh and incompetent unfair government you know i i would be remiss if i did not bring up this uh aspect of roger's writings that i think is is really coming back up and jacob you've reminded me of this when you have very politely declined to go after the fundamental flaws at the heart of our politics right now but i would like to bring one up perhaps because i think it's really in the news in the 1980s as reaganism is on the rise thatcherism is on the rise free markets are the be all and end all of our politics particularly on the right roger questioned the idolatry of the free market he he questioned the idea that man is fundamentally an economic being which he found in in our political traditions to to some degree and now all these years later again this seems to be popular you see it in in britain with certainly with brexit and with questioning of some trade arrangements you see in the united states with a renewed interest in economic protection canceling trade deals reworking trade deals this has been called anathema to the conservative tradition by some people on the more libertarian side of things but it does seem to to be here to stay robert if you could comment at all from the american perspective and then jacob from the british perspective i'd i'd love to hear it as it seems to be one of the more provocative thoughts that roger put out and it seems provocative even still today well i do have something to say about that and i am happy to do it but before we leave the topic of free speech i just want to add one more thing and it's a great insight from another great british thinker the philosopher john stuart mill who was wrote in the 19th century and whose pertinent work on this topic is called on liberty in the second chapter of on liberty a chapter entitled liberty of thought and discussion mill makes a point that we need to embrace and never forget and that is that threats to the liberty of speech threats to freedom of speech and all that it undergirds come not only in the form of government coercion they come also in the form of the pressures of public opinion what we would today call political correctness or woke ideology where people fear to speak their minds not because they think the sheriff is going to be coming with a warrant to arrest them but for fear that their reputations will be tarnished that their future career opportunities or their children's educational opportunities will be uh damaged or something like this this leads to a kind of self-censorship which we see in our classrooms at all levels students not speaking their minds for fear it leads to a self-censorship which is absolutely toxic toxic to the educational process we need to be able and our students need to be able to speak their minds not fearing on the one hand of course the sheriff with the warrant but also not fearing being canceled being the libel defamed in the uh in social media and among their peers are having marks against them that future employers will uh will use uh that kind of thing it's a really important point on mill's part and we can't forget it so when we when we when we defend free speech we have to defend it not only against government coercion but also against the tyranny of the mob the twitter mob the tweet the tyranny of uh now on your point which is one uh michael uh that i highlighted in my own tribute to roger in the new york times shortly uh after his death famously rogers said two cheers for capitalism uh and in fact he maybe only would give it one in three quarters but he was not alone in this another figure who was too too rarely uh uh remarked on as being similar to roger in important ways and that's the late irving crystal the great neoconservative american uh thinker irving crystal had exactly the same insight irving crystal said what roger said two cheers for capitalism not three why not three well for a practical and a principled reason the principled reason is we cannot reduce the human being to the economic that's the mistake of marxism roger was worried as irving crystal was worried about extreme libertarians actually buying in to a premise of the very marxism that they rightly uh held in contempt and uh did everything they could to oppose so that's that's the principled reason the practical reason is this that unbridled capitalism and especially a corrupted capitalism a crony capitalism uh these kinds of developments are like an acid that eats away at traditional institutions people matter more than money we're not cogs in the machine the economy exists for man man doesn't exist for the economy and if the economy is not upholding what's human what's humane then we've got to change it we need to regulate it in a way that will make it more humane it's the human good that matters and the point of a market economy is to serve the human goods the market economy does no one was a fiercer critic of communism and all forms of socialism than roger scrutin your most ferocious libertarian was not a more severe critic of socialism than roger scrutin was and yet roger recognized that we cannot go with a pure laissez-faire system we need appropriate modest regulations where necessary to prevent for example the destruction of ways of life or communities by the unregulated uh market now roger recognized that markets had lifted millions of people out of poverty socialism never did that uh that markets do have the very salutary effect of tending to raise the quality of goods and services and lower the price of those goods and services that serves the human interest that serves the human good that serves the common good we should be for that so yes he was for markets two cheers or at least one in three quarters not three jacob well i i think this is very important and i think it's a misunderstanding of conservatism to think that it is entirely a free-market creed and it's only a capitalist creed i would differentiate capitalism and free markets because i think capitalism has within it and the tendency that robert alluded to to become cronyistic and monopolistic and unfettered capitalism certainly goes in that direction whereas free markets allow the market to be free and to operate properly but if you look at the 19th century it was the conservatives who did things like introduce factory acts who were willing to have acts for housing and for sewage and things like that which the liberals kept on saying no no this is a terrible interference in people's lives we should leave them to it and conservatives must always had a strand of recognizing that there is a role for the state the conservative is not anti-the state but where if i dare i would slightly disagree with roger is i think by the time you've got to the 1980s the british and the american state had become so unfree market so much state intervention that you needed uh to readdress the balance and that margaret thatcher and ronald reagan did that though it is worth mentioning as roberts brought it up about how much roger hated communism his great courage was he also did this practically and was a regular visitor behind the iron curtain when this wasn't a particularly safe thing to do particularly to hungary where he is still very much revered and remembered for what he did to help them when they were under the communist yoke absolutely right it must never be forgotten what roger did the courage that he exemplified in teaching behind the iron curtain in order to help to undercut the foundations of the communist system you know i love this point of the putting into practice of all of these ideas roger really did embody this he really did travel to hungary he really did teach he really did live this life it wasn't merely abstract it was a real practice tradition and he practiced these rituals so getting to his point of oikophilia the the love of one's home i find this and especially among younger conservatives that i speak to a difficulty of putting these things into practice because we have a sort of inborn natural love of country in the same way we have a love of family you know it's a sort of extension of filial piety but we look around our country i'm at least speaking for the united states and we see things decaying so quickly we're seeing the culture coarsene so quickly i don't think it's just a nostalgia to talk about the good old days it does seem that something really has changed or at least accelerated and many young conservatives that i've spoken to have questions about how to love their own home if they find their own home to be increasingly unlovable robert any uh any words of advice to make our homes more lovable your your parents are your parents with all their flaws they're your parents you have certain responsibilities to them because they're your parents and it works in the other direction as well your kids are your kids you don't choose which kids to have right they come they're a big surprise uh you know and if you have more than one you realize how different two kids can be and you're wondering wait a minute they come from the same two parents and bring them up in the same household so different uh but uh even if they go wrong even if they're wayward uh you know they're still our kids and uh we still have to love them and we have to try to help them reform um same with our country it's because we love our country that when it goes astray we need to reform it uh our country uh you know i'm strongly pro-life our country in the united states has embraced the abortion license as most of the developed democracies have i think this is a fundamental injustice a turning against human dignity and a direct assault on our core principle of the profound equal inherent in equal dignity of each and every member of the human family the one we express in our declaration of the concept of all men being created equal or even going back deeper into our civilization the biblical principle of of the human being made in the very image and likeness of god that's the fundamental ground of our equality but we've embraced that abortion license the idea that you can kill an unborn child in the united states just as a matter of right but that doesn't mean and it doesn't make me think well you know this is a terrible country this is a terribly unjust country uh that's it it's over i'm getting out of here i'm gonna go find a place that that doesn't embrace that if there are any left no what it causes me to do is to say i'm going to fight for justice i'm going to fight for reform i'm going to fight to make this country faithful again faithful too just as we overcame slavery and jim crow and segregation make it faithful to the principle of the profound and inherent and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family beginning with the child in the womb and going all the way to the frail elderly person a person suffering from dementia or other cognitive uh disabilities uh it's a it's it should imbue us it should uh uh it should cause us to seek to reform the injustices and make our home beautiful uh again jacob is a man with parents and many children and who loves this country uh where do you see the state of things over in britain indeed well i i very much agree with with robert i i think the lack of respect for the individual and for life is tragic that um northern ireland has recently followed the abortion laws of um england wales and scotland and until they did so there are a hundred thousand people alive in northern ireland today who would not be alive had northern ireland had the laws that we have in the rest of the united kingdom and the um terrible discrimination against the disabled that takes place with babies being killed almost at full term if they have even slight disabilities is i think one of the saddest things about modern western society um and i think it is important to say to young conservatives that nonetheless it is our country and it is our our family i indeed have lots of children i have six children and four of them have got to their first communion so i've been through the catechism with them and i do try to emphasize the importance of the fourth commandment honor thy father and my mother as you can imagine and my children like tease me and say when we get to that they bring out a great long list so they say honor your mother nanny grandmother brothers sisters and i say and and until they can't think of anything else the father doesn't get added and i think family is fundamental and i don't think the state should be ashamed of supporting the family and saying that this is a really important building block for society and for the nation state and doing everything it can to support it and i think we should say to young conservatives have the courage of your convictions if you think like this say to lots of other people and that actually if we stand up for what we believe in we can build a better society because what we believe in is actually very appealing the stability of family the strength of the country the recognition that within families within countries things go wrong mistakes are made but that doesn't mean that it's not still your flesh and blood your country which you wish to see succeed and prosper well since you you mentioned jacob the fourth commandment and i noticed that this is a fully mackerel snapping uh group of people assembled here uh all catholics on this panel i do wonder about something that that roger wrote quite a bit about which is this relationship between our conservatism and religion our patriotism and religion uh sort of confessional conservatism confessional in the sense of you know we all believe the same sorts of things and something else geographic or or otherwise we will be getting to uh audience questions in just one moment but i would love to hear both of your thoughts on this because it does seem to keep cropping up robert uh roger on religion the role of a sort of one's faith for conservatives living today in uh in this politics of home well that's that's a really interesting uh question you know even privately i found that roger while identifying himself as a christian identifying himself as an anglican playing the organ uh in in church and so forth uh uh was reticent he didn't like discussing faith in personal terms to this day i don't know the details of what roger believed religiously i take him at his word that you know he was a christian he was an an anglican uh religious fervor is not something that uh i think of when i think of uh of of roger but very devout people needn't have religious fervor um but it's clear that he thought religion was an important thing in huma in human life that it was it was it was ubiquitous we find it across cultures we find it over time there's a longing for the spiritual there's a there's a set of questions we can't help but ask about the fundamental things in life the great existential questions the questions of meaning and value uh what's it all about where did we come from is there a more than merely human source of meaning and value uh are we cre created or if not where on earth did we uh did we did we come from do we have an eternal destiny uh uh is there a larger transcendent picture that we're part of is there a way to glimpse that those questions roger thought were very very important questions but if you look at his writings on the subject they don't explore them deeply i can't help but think because i knew roger that there were things going on in his head that he was not leaving those questions unexplored but he did not write about them in detail as far as i am aware and even in our private conversations he was reluctant to go as deep as often i wanted to go or as other interlocutors wanted to go and it might simply be that he just didn't know just wasn't true he was wrestling with the questions but uh was ambivalent about about the answer so i i i say you know in my new york times uh tribute to him shortly after his death i say that uh you know he roger was a christian but how orthodox a christian he was i don't even think roger now [Laughter] jacob in your uh now even more secular country than ours is uh where do you where do you see this role of faith in uh in our politics of home well i think and this ties in with with um roger's view and and you then burke spew that if you believe that you have a responsibility both to the generations before you and the generations after you that is an easier responsibility to bear if you believe in something that is eternal because you see your place in the world rather than it being purely about your own life it is about a succession of lives and lives yet to come and i think that was a very important influence to roger and i think that is much easier to believe with christian faith than if you have no faith but i also think it was very important to him in terms of his aesthetic appreciation the beauty of holiness and the realization that if you look at buildings that are beautiful and that have been built for the worship of god and you see that as an expression of worship and particularly in england if you look at the depth of faith in the middle ages when people spent so much of their money on building incredible churches but not just the great cathedrals but small villages having a church that was worth more than anything else in the village more solid structure this extraordinary popular party that there was led to beauty and that if you have beauty of holiness surely you should have beauty for man who is made in god's image as well and then this ties in very much with his belief on buildings and all that plays from that banning and so on and how you create a society this ties in with churchill's comment but we make our buildings and our buildings make arts if you have beautiful buildings you create a good society but that comes from an understanding of the beauty of holiness roger uh put a lot of emphasis on the importance of the local michael and that's something that should not i think be left um uncommented uh upon uh yes he believed in national loyalty a national identity but he also believed in local loyalty perhaps even more fiercely in local loyalty and local identity most of our countrymen we do not know and cannot uh cannot know if you're an important public figure like jacob rees-moss most of your countrymen know you but but you don't know them uh even the best politicians no it only shakes so many hands back in the days when we were allowed to shake hands or tons of people like we do today um but we can know and and and build true rich relationships uh with uh the people in our local community so you know beginning with our own family but also the people with whom we go to church or we shop in the same shops and stores those we uh we pass on the street uh roger wanted i think people to to be aware that that's itself an important part of living a human life it's to be embedded not just in a grand national community or or an international faith like christianity or islam or judaism but also to be a member of a local community a full participant again with with obligations as well as rights and and privileges you get benefits but you also have obligations obligations that you wouldn't have if you weren't a member of that community if you were just a guest in that community you wouldn't have you should be treated nicely and so forth but if you're a guest you don't have the same obligations that you have if you're as you're a member of the community you should be a contributing member of your local community and you and you shouldn't deprecate that you shouldn't think oh well that's inferior in significance to my being english or american or polish or what have you the local really matters well speaking of contributing members of our local community we have many many questions from our audience we have very little time but we have very many questions so i will i will get right to it first question from colin as a freshman in college it seems like the value proposition of higher education is very marginal being lectured on the male gaze and implicit bias i can't help but feel that i'm just being trained to be a cog in the machinery in the rare case that i've found an institution that still emphasizes a classical education the costs are much too high how would you recommend i go about pursuing edification and educating myself given the topic perhaps we should begin with professor george well i i feel for colin because i know that many of our educational institutions have abandoned classical learning they don't think that that's something worth putting on offer for their students don't even make available to their students uh but it's still a profoundly valuable thing to do and i'm delighted that it's something that colin himself would like to do um look if if there's not a place it's not a formal institution where you can uh you can read and discuss uh the best that has been thought and said to quote matthew arnold just do it yourself you know create your own agenda plan out your next year i'll give you a tip begin with plato's dialogue gorgeous that was very foundational and fundamental and transformational to me uh let's start at the beginning where it all begins in plato's academy uh begin with the gorgeous and then begin to acquaint yourself find people who share this interest whether online or in your own local community who will read along with you form reading groups belong to reading groups you can begin with the greeks and the romans and go forward they're the great treasures of civilization the the works that ennoble uh and not only inform uh the reader and those who are discussing them all the way you know up through uh shakespeare and uh into the 19 newman and mill and into the 20th century with so many great uh great works give yourself a classical education and ally yourself in the project with anybody who's willing to read along and talk with you jacob i noticed you have many books in the room that you're in right now any thoughts on the subject well i i think robert's given such a brilliant answer i don't really see there's much um that i can add they i just one thought which is that the great teachers inspire one to seek knowledge for oneself and i think that's basically what robert is is saying that if you've been inspired to learn about something then there are ways of doing it and developing it uh even if um you won't find a a university that isn't far too woke to do it for you though ultimately i think market forces will provide um universities that aren't entirely woke next question from john is there a role for conservative thinkers to further reassure the people that they may be at least in part correct in their unreflective beliefs or a role for conservative politicians in acting on them given this particular subject i think we ought to begin with jacob well thank you i thought this was very important during the brexit debate because the natural instinct of the british people was to leave the european union that people thought it was undemocratic that it didn't work it wasn't in their interest but lots and lots of clever people told them that they were stupid and that they got it all wrong and they couldn't possibly leave and we absolutely needed people like boris johnson and michael gove who i understand has spoken to you to give the heft to the argument to say no this is and roger of course to say this is intellectually respectable and i think there's a really important role for academics um for leading political figures to reassure people that what they're saying what they're thinking their natural instincts are well founded partly and it's emperor's new clothes isn't it that nobody wants to feel silly by expressing a view that doesn't have any intellectual backing and it is my one worry about the level of retreat of conservatives in academic institutions uh i i i think although it's quite fun to mark all these lefty organizations and tease them for their wakeness and um the council culture and the pulling down of statues all the silly stuff they want to do actually conservatism needs an intellectual base and as long as roger was alive we had sort of somebody would always point to and we need more people like that certainly in the uk i think america is in a in a better position robert well we we we have needs as well and we need more people um but both public figures uh in the world of public affairs like jacob himself and we have some like that over here as well uh but also people on the intellectual side uh roger was brilliant to this uh there were many many areas in which he knew that the intellectual elites were wrong and the people were right but the intellectual elites were able to marshal a fancy sounding persuasive sounding argument and it was roger virtually on his own trying to provide that argument uh for the position that turned out actually to be uh superior think of how many great intellectuals and i don't i don't mean just foolish ones i mean truly great intellectuals fell for marxism yeah now some fortunately thought their way out of it the great american historian eugene genovese was a marxist for most of his life eventually thought his way out of it but even when he was a marxist he was a great historian but he bought the marxist line and many many intellectuals uh uh did uh the intellectuals bought into eugenics before the nazis gave it a bad name they don't want to admit it today intellectuals look back on our own history and see that they went hook line and sinker they were up to their necks in the eugenic ideology all giving it a complete uh complete imprimatur and and holding people who opposed it in contempt as if they were hicks and rubes and hillbillies and fools because they weren't buying into science uh and making uh humanity uh better well that's very embarrassing to call it to their attention today but there are big mistakes being made by the intellectual elites today so we need not only statesmen like jacob we need intellectuals like roger who will be able to make the intellectual case to support the sound views that people have even if in many cases they don't know how to make the philosophical or economic or sociological arguments supporting them i do think in the united states we're seeing something that's great and that's a renaissance a a a an emergence of a younger group of conservative intellectuals who are doing exactly the kind of work roger did defending the sanctity of human life uh sound understanding of marriage in the family things that we've we've gone far astray on in our societies but i'm thinking of young people like melissa maskela uh sharif girgis ryan anderson some of these were my own most of those actual all of those were my own former students but there are others across the spectrum alexandra desanctus so deborah goldman so many others who are making the case really effectively in the public square for sound values where the intellectual elites have gone far astray that is a bit of hope to end on sometimes conservatives get a bad rap for being pessimistic i'm reminded of of priest friends comment that uh the difference between a scottish optimist and a scottish pessimist is a scottish pessimist says things can't get any worse and a scottish optimist says oh yes they can and i find the same can be can often be said of conservatives but there is a note of hope and speaking of young people doing uh wonderful things uh fisher and his work with the roger scrutin legacy foundation i think uh has is really offering quite a lot i have gained so much from this discussion gentleman such such an honor to be with both of you professor robert george and the right honorable jacob rees-mogg fisher i turn it back over to you thank you so much michael thank you gentlemen for a wonderful discussion uh just absolutely fantastic there's not much else i can say i've really quite enjoyed this past hour and i'm sad that we have to now wrap it up and coming upon the hour but with that i just want to say thank you again to to the three of you for a great look at i think rogers politics uh his importance and his lasting legacy especially for us in the uk and the u.s

Channel: Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation

Views: 2,980

Rating: 4.9452057 out of 5

Keywords: Roger Scruton, Oikophilia, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert P. George, Michael Knowles, Scruton Politics, Oikophobia

Id: 2r3gzkNpeBw

Length: 60min 4sec (3604 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021