Has conservatism
any intellectual merit? Or is it
essentially a mere collection of rationalizations for the status quo? With
Trump’s influence and visibility, never has the issue been more urgent -- or
more confusing. Trump seems to be a man of the Right. The Republican Party
today is largely defined by loyalty to him. Is he a conservative? The Never
Trumpers say he’s not, but why? Is there any form of conservatism that deserves our attention today?
A good place to
begin to think about those questions is the work of Roger Scruton, who died in
January. Princeton Prof. Robert George called him “the most important Anglo-American conservative thinker of his
generation.” British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson tweeted, “We have lost the greatest modern conservative thinker — who not only
had the guts to say what he thought but said it beautifully.”
I use Scruton's work to try to sort out what's attractive in conservatism today - and come out of the closet as myself a conservative of a peculiar sort - in a new piece at the New Rambler, here.