I had the great pleasure to see Sir Roger Scruton about ten years ago. He was lecturing at my alma mater, the University of Tulsa and I heard about it a few days before. At that time, I was working the graveyard shift but I didn’t have to be there until 10:00 pm. Ordinarily, I would sleep until seven or eight but I invariably found myself waking up at 5:00 every now and then. His lecture was on one of those days.
It was free and it was going to start at seven so I thought to myself “why not?” It turned out to be one of the best impulsive decisions of my life.
Scruton was not yet knighted but I had heard of him. All I could remember was that he was on the Right, philosophically speaking. His lecture was eye-opening in its robust defense of conservatism. Not the neoliberal, neoconservative, free-market-at-all-costs conservatism that was all the rage back then; the kind of conservatism that elevated the individual above all else and paved the way for sodomy to be redefined as marriage. An earlier conservatism, a Christian one as explicated by the likes of Edmund Burke.
I don’t know if anybody recorded it but it made me reassess my own (flagging) devotion to libertarianism. Obama was President and the gap between the uber-wealthy and the rest of us was widening. Anyway, he was a prolific writer and lecturer and the older he got, the bolder he got. Back in 2018, he was appointed to some British architectural preservation board but the totalitarians of the Left exacted revenge against him because of some ancient slight. And so, this venerable knight of the realm was unceremoniously dumped for no good reason.
In any event, I wish him a restful peace. He certainly deserved it. And he will be remembered years from now while his totalitarian enemies will long be forgotten.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-passing-of-a-giant/
This absolutely worth an hour of your time. (Added bonus of Jordan Peterson.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvbtKAYdcZY
Sir Roger was my favorite philosopher — he truly cared about the good, the true, and the beautiful. Memory Eternal!
Losing Prof Scruton is a big loss for rational people.
A rather good obit of him in the NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/books/roger-scruton-dead.html
One of the best Scrutonisms: “A writer who says that there are no truth, or that all truth is ‘merely relative’, is asking you to not believe him. So don’t.”
That about says it all, doesn’t it?
Sir Roger’s architectural ideas:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/roger-scruton-ideas-beauty-architecture-housing-crisis/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in&utm_term=first