Michael writes:
For some time, I have believed that conservatism has had its head severed from its spleen.
Roger Scruton, although he never quite put it this way, used to impress upon his audiences that conservatism was the search for the reasons behind commitments we did not make by reasoning our way into them.
It is a young man’s mistake to assume that clear thinking happens only when we push our emotions aside.
He concludes:
So, my hope for myself and my peers is that we learn to think more clearly in this new year, whatever it costs us.
Okay, I’ll bite. What, specifically, does this mean? Who needs to learn to “think more clearly”? About which topics? What are the “commitments we did not make by reasoning our way into them,” and where does this lack of useful reasoning leave those who might dissent? In which areas of society, politics, and culture ought we to refuse to “push our emotions aside”? Should that be our general approach? Or does it apply only to, say, tariffs or immigration or national parks? And what is adopting this attitude likely to “cost us” that we are not already paying? Something has to have prompted this injunction. What is it, and who would benefit from heeding this advice?