Dan Hitchens at First Things has penned a remarkable reported essay on Roger Scruton’s life and formation.
And it contains this passing observation that I had not considered.
Scruton is, without compare, the intellectual renegade of Europe’s ’60s generation—progenitor of a highly sophisticated conservative philosophy not only of politics, but of law, religion, culture, sex, music, architecture, the environment, the nation, and a dozen other subjects. No author has done more to shape the imagination of the European right, from Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni to much of the leadership of both Reform U.K. and the Conservative Party. From where, one wonders, did this extraordinary and unique figure—“a rebel against rebellion,” as he called himself—emerge?
As I have sought to answer that puzzle, talking to Scruton’s old schoolfriends, girlfriends, and university friends, another question has occurred to me. When you speak to that generation, you are in touching distance of a world, not just before the internet, but before the impact of TV, when the Western cultural tradition was the most exciting diversion on offer.
We do seem to radically discount how disruptive television was to cultural transmission and the education of elites.