tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post7127344113424449591..comments2024-03-29T09:09:46.823+02:00Comments on A Political Refugee From The Global Village : From Peter Hitchens' Roger Scruton lecture delivered at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, 24th October 2022Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-891289711377156224.post-56151986248531020652022-12-20T16:59:57.552+02:002022-12-20T16:59:57.552+02:00A """"conservative""...A """"conservative"""" who doesn’t even want to conserve our 400 year old kingdom presumes to be the gatekeeper of conservativism? Irony, thy name is Hitchens. He invites: ‘I challenge anyone … to name a single socially, morally or culturally conservative action she undertook in office’—could ‘challenge’ anyone similarly to ‘name a single socially, morally or culturally conservative’ thought that <i>he’s</i> ever spoken or written.<br /><br />Mags is certainly overrated—neither as good as some of the Right claim nor as bad as the Left does. Amongst her mistakes was the Anglo–Irish Agreement, which (to her credit) she later acknowledged as error, and that Enoch’s ‘<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200805105943/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4716306/When-Powell-was-right.html" rel="nofollow">assessment was right</a>’—but admitting error in 1998 does not prevent the Anglo–Irish Agreement being signed in 1985. (Of course, Hitchens wants to hand Ulster over to Dublin.)<br /><br />And tbf to Mags, she was one person amongst 339 (as of 1979) Conservative MPs—if it’s all down to Thatch, what were the 338 other MPs doing? (One MP absent from that 338 was Airey Neave, murdered by INLA prior to the ’79 GE—Shadow NI Secretary, he promised to be even better in office than the able Roy Mason, not only continuing but escalating the aggressive anti-IRA policies of his Labour predecessor and integrating NI more closely into British life. He might also have stiffened Mags’ sinews in other areas.)<br /><br />Hitchens’ screed is typical magical thinking, blaming all problems on one object—<i>and if we only change that <b>one</b> thing, everything will magically become better.</i> Get rid of the Jews/Jocks/whites/blacks/Thatcher/Brown/royals, bring back National Service, secede, etc. However, we live on a chaotic world populated by imperfect mortals navigating seas of ignorance and confusion, and it will take far, <i>far</i> more than changing one measly thing. We got rid of Thatcher and got Major instead, followed by Blair, Cameron, Johnson, etc. (I doubt Mags would have shut the country down as BoJo did.)<br /><br />The final nail in conservatism’s coffin was Whig radicals like Scruton, Hitchens and Heffer being allowed to not only infiltrate the movement but attain prominence. The failure of conservatism was remarked upon over a century ago by such as Robert Dabney:<br />‘<i>[C]onservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. … [C]onservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. … It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle.</i>’<br />(Dabney, Robert L. <i>Discussions</i>, vol. 4, 1897. 496.)<br /><br />See also Chesterton in 1924, ‘<a href="https://chestertonstl.wordpress.com/2016/10/10/the-blunders-of-our-parties/" rel="nofollow">The Blunders of Our Parties</a>’.<br /><br />The failed conservatives of yesteryear have given way to faux conservatives like Hitchens, et al, who have exchanged <i>conserving</i> opposition policy for <i>promoting<i> it instead.ScotchedEarthnoreply@blogger.com