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Liberal Conservatism, Not Conservative Liberalism
The Meaning of Conservatism, Revised 3rd edition
by Roger Scruton
St. Augustine's Press, 2002.
In the end, we must face the fact that it is impossible to be a pure conservative, just as it is impossible to be a pure liberal. In explaining the "meaning of conservatism," Roger Scruton does not try to claim that any human being can be only a conservative. Instead, he shows that the clash between liberals and conservatives is really one between perspectives. The liberal perspective is "first person," and the conservative perspective is "third person," and all modern human beings look at the world from both points of view. The problem, according to Scruton, is that we selfish modern individuals refuse to give the thirdperson view its due, despite the fact that it is perfectly natural, and just, for us to do so.
I am a liberal insofar as I view everything from the standpoint of my desires as a free individual. I approach everything in the world as if it exists for my sake. all social and political institutions-not to mention other human beings-I judge according to how they help me maximize my autonomy and secure the unlimited satisfaction of my desires. This first-person perspective lies at the foundation of Milton Friedman's libertarian vision of the spontaneous order arising in market exchanges; it lies at the foundation of Karl Marx's vision of the unlimited personal choice that human beings will enjoy under communism. Such a liberal view dominates everywhere in our political and intellectual worlds today: government and every other human institution-even the family-is understood as resulting from the free choice (the social contract) of autonomous individuals. And for Scruton, this liberalism is above all an American myth, because America is the Lockean society par excellence.
It is fashionable today to say that liberalism has been discredited or is now exhausted, but Scruton helps us see that this is far from true. The Lockean progress that aims to reconstruct all of human life in accordance with libertarian principles continues to accelerate. In advanced, post-industrial societies today, the average manand especially the average intellectualspends more of his life in the first-person perspective than ever. (Though it is important to add, as a gentle corrective...