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A review by bootman
How to Be a Conservative by Roger Scruton
5.0
I’m a pretty progressive lefty, but I’m a firm believer that we should read books by people with different ideologies. The other day on Twitter, I got caught in the middle of a debate among philosophers about politics, but I managed to squeeze out some recommendations for conservative philosophers. Most academics and intellectuals are liberals, so I wanted to see who the best philosophers were, and Roger Scruton was recommended. He has a ton of books, but this one is the most recent, and it seemed to be exactly what I was looking for.
At the end of the day, I’m both happy that I read this book as well as extremely disappointed. I’m happy because I read it and got a better idea of what conservatives believe and how they think, but I’m disappointed because I found most of the arguments extremely weak and sometimes very contradictory.
Jonathan Haidt’s work helped me understand that people have different moral values, and that’s often what divides us. That’s something I can definitely accept. But, I also believe that the best books argue with themselves by trying to debunk their own arguments. When the author shows that they put deep thought into challenging their own beliefs, those are the best books. And maybe I expected that from this book simply because I wanted to see why conservatism isn’t so bad.
Instead, although Scruton is a very smart guy, this book seems to have been written for conservatives and managed to touch on all the silly culture war issues under the guise of it just being conservative beliefs. In addition to that, he mischaracterizes a lot of leftist beliefs, and rather than saying, “Here’s what conservatives believe,” he uses straw man arguments to say, “this is why leftists are wrong” while not even properly explaining what leftist believe.
Throughout the book, he tries to use moral arguments for conservative beliefs, and they just don’t land. This is an issue I often find with conservatism because they believe things when there’s no actual evidence, such as, “Social programs will make people lazy.” What really sealed it for me is later in the book when he uses the standard, extremely weak arguments against gay marriage. I was really hoping he’d argue something that made sense where I could say, “Well, although I disagree, I get what he’s saying,” but that’s not the case at all.
I guess lastly, there’s a lot of contradictions in the book. The primary conservative belief of “we should uphold traditions” makes no sense, and it never will. Every tradition was new at some point, so how could you argue against new ways of doing things? It’s like they just picked a point in time and said, “This shall be our starting point, and we need to keep it like this.”
Anywho, this book is hundreds of pages of confirmation bias for conservatives. If this is the best conservatives have as far as intellectuals go, I’m not impressed. I was given some other recommendations, though, so I’ll check those out and see.
At the end of the day, I’m both happy that I read this book as well as extremely disappointed. I’m happy because I read it and got a better idea of what conservatives believe and how they think, but I’m disappointed because I found most of the arguments extremely weak and sometimes very contradictory.
Jonathan Haidt’s work helped me understand that people have different moral values, and that’s often what divides us. That’s something I can definitely accept. But, I also believe that the best books argue with themselves by trying to debunk their own arguments. When the author shows that they put deep thought into challenging their own beliefs, those are the best books. And maybe I expected that from this book simply because I wanted to see why conservatism isn’t so bad.
Instead, although Scruton is a very smart guy, this book seems to have been written for conservatives and managed to touch on all the silly culture war issues under the guise of it just being conservative beliefs. In addition to that, he mischaracterizes a lot of leftist beliefs, and rather than saying, “Here’s what conservatives believe,” he uses straw man arguments to say, “this is why leftists are wrong” while not even properly explaining what leftist believe.
Throughout the book, he tries to use moral arguments for conservative beliefs, and they just don’t land. This is an issue I often find with conservatism because they believe things when there’s no actual evidence, such as, “Social programs will make people lazy.” What really sealed it for me is later in the book when he uses the standard, extremely weak arguments against gay marriage. I was really hoping he’d argue something that made sense where I could say, “Well, although I disagree, I get what he’s saying,” but that’s not the case at all.
I guess lastly, there’s a lot of contradictions in the book. The primary conservative belief of “we should uphold traditions” makes no sense, and it never will. Every tradition was new at some point, so how could you argue against new ways of doing things? It’s like they just picked a point in time and said, “This shall be our starting point, and we need to keep it like this.”
Anywho, this book is hundreds of pages of confirmation bias for conservatives. If this is the best conservatives have as far as intellectuals go, I’m not impressed. I was given some other recommendations, though, so I’ll check those out and see.