AT THE eND OF hISTORY E ARE ALL nEOLIBERAL:

Conservatism at its core, as Scruton understands it, "tells us that we have collectively inherited good things that we must strive to keep" (vii). It "starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created" (viii). Our inheritance "brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but duties of trusteeship. Things fought for and died for should not be idly squandered. For they are the property of others, who are not yet born" (182).

But what are we preserving? Without further specification, these ideas lead nowhere in particular. Jerry Muller observes that "conservatives have, at one time and place or another, defended royal power, constitutional monarchy, aristocratic prerogative, representative democracy, and presidential dictatorship; high tariffs and free trade; nationalism and internationalism; centralism and federalism; a society of inherited estates, a capitalist, market society, and one or another version of the welfare state."[1] Samuel Huntington argues that conservatism has no continuing essence: it must be understood situationally, "as the ideology arising out of a distinct but recurring type of historical situation in which a fundamental challenge is directed at established institutions and in which the supporters of those institutions employ the conservative ideology in their defense."[2]

Scruton, on the other hand, has a specific answer. The goods that he wants to conserve are the achievements of contemporary democracies: the "opportunity to live our lives as we will; the security of impartial law, through which our grievances are answered and our hurts restored; the protection of our environment as a shared asset, which cannot be seized or destroyed at the whim of powerful interests; the open and enquiring culture that has shaped our schools and universities; the democratic procedures that enable us to elect our representatives and pass our own laws" (vii). 

Most liberals would agree with that list because what Scruton is interested in conserving is, well, liberalism. His ideology is a liberal conservatism. As Huntington observes, "in the proper historical circumstances conservatism may well be necessary for the defense of liberal institutions," for "the greatest need is not so much the creation of more liberal institutions as the successful defense of those that already exist" (460, 472). 

Then what is the disagreement about? He doesn't put it this way, but the most important line that divides Scruton from his interlocutors on the moderate left concerns how to defend liberalism. Conservatism, in all its many forms, aims to preserve an inarticulately valued inheritance. That leads it to rely on argumentative moves that many liberals distrust: a tolerance of imperfection, skepticism about experiments in social engineering, and an attachment to existing institutions, customs, and habits, particularly the irrational prejudices that lead one to defer to existing authorities. Those moves are useful today. In fact, they are constantly being used against Trump. Scruton offers a path for liberals to understand that they are already, in a certain way, conservatives.

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