Notes on the State of Virginia

DANIEL DEFOE’s heroine, found guilty of prostitution, was sent as a punishment to Rappahannock, which then comprised most of northern and western Virginia. Today this beautiful Indian name applies only to the Rappahannock River and to a small county in the Blue Ridge foothills. Like Moll Flanders, the Scrutons were banished to Rappahannock by English puritanism. Not that the puritans had arrested us; but by making our favorite pastime into a crime they have nevertheless made us into criminals. And make no mistake: Fox hunting is as offensive to the puritan English of today as prostitution was to their 18th-century forebears. Labour members of Parliament, who condone every kind of sexual excess and seem to rejoice in the breakdown of family values, become pale with horror at the thought that someone somewhere might be enjoying “the sport of kings.”

The Hunting Act, forced through Parliament by measures that are at best unconstitutional, at worst downright oppressive, exemplifies the decline of British politics, and the almost total loss of direction that we have experienced in the years of New Labour. Every now and then a desperate report is put before Parliament concerning the preparations being made by Islamist terrorists, the escalating levels of immigration, the collapse of school discipline, and a hundred other causes of social unrest. The Labour members, who dominate Parliament, barely read to the end of the document, and leave all action to the prime minister, who passes the buck to the spin doctors, who brief the broadly sympathetic and in any case left-wing media to the effect that the problem has been exaggerated-and besides, the government has it under control. Even the decision to enter the war in Iraq occupied Parliament for only ten hours. It seemed, to most Labour members, as though the matter hardly concerned them. When it came to hunting, however, they were gripped by the only political passion they know: a vindictive desire to settle scores with the English upper class. As a result Parliament spent 252 hours debating the issue, with rant upon rant against the evils of a sport that not a single one of its critics had ever witnessed.

RS

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Roger Scruton

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William F. Buckley Jr.

DANIEL DEFOE’s heroine, found guilty of prostitution, was sent as a punishment to Rappahannock, which then comprised most of northern and western Virginia. Today this beautiful Indian name applies only to the Rappahannock River and to a small county in the Blue Ridge foothills. Like Moll Flanders, the Scrutons were banished to Rappahannock by English puritanism. Not that the puritans had arrested us; but by making our favorite pastime into a crime they have nevertheless made us into criminals. And make no mistake: Fox hunting is as offensive to the puritan English of today as prostitution was to their 18th-century forebears. Labour members of Parliament, who condone every kind of sexual excess and seem to rejoice in the breakdown of family values, become pale with horror at the thought that someone somewhere might be enjoying “the sport of kings.”

The Hunting Act, forced through Parliament by measures that are at best unconstitutional, at worst downright oppressive, exemplifies the decline of British politics, and the almost total loss of direction that we have experienced in the years of New Labour. Every now and then a desperate report is put before Parliament concerning the preparations being made by Islamist terrorists, the escalating levels of immigration, the collapse of school discipline, and a hundred other causes of social unrest. The Labour members, who dominate Parliament, barely read to the end of the document, and leave all action to the prime minister, who passes the buck to the spin doctors, who brief the broadly sympathetic and in any case left-wing media to the effect that the problem has been exaggerated-and besides, the government has it under control. Even the decision to enter the war in Iraq occupied Parliament for only ten hours. It seemed, to most Labour members, as though the matter hardly concerned them. When it came to hunting, however, they were gripped by the only political passion they know: a vindictive desire to settle scores with the English upper class. As a result Parliament spent 252 hours debating the issue, with rant upon rant against the evils of a sport that not a single one of its critics had ever witnessed.