Roger Scruton the Conservative philosopher evasive and prevaricating on feminism

CK to Roger Scruton
1 March 2013, 15:14
Subject: Re: What does the Conservative party believe any more?

May I know your views on feminism, Mr Scruton?  Do you think a Conservative can be a feminist?

CK to Roger Scruton
On 3 Mar 2013
May I take it that you have no intention of being drawn on this matter?    If so, I will proceed to point out at http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.co.uk/ that

1. all emasculated British men are afraid of discusing feminism
2. Western philosophy is not wise and is in fact vacuous as well as  a waste of the three years it would take the student to complete this pointless and fraudulent degree
3. Western philosophers are milquetoasts afraid of criticising feminism
4. there is no English Conservative philosopher worthy of that name if Roger Scruton is afraid of discussing feminism
5. since Roger Scruton is not prepared to discuss feminism or answer my question of whether it is possible to be both a feminist and a Conservative, then there is no English Conservative philosopher worthy of that name
6. since there is no English Philosopher worthy of that name that post should be declared vacant and applicants invited to fill that post

Roger Scruton to CK
3 March 2013, 17:55
Subject: Re: What does the Conservative party believe any more?

Lack of time, rather than evasiveness. Not a feminist, tend to take the same view as Christina Sommers,
RS

CK to Roger Scruton
3 March 2013, 19:10
Subject: Re: What does the Conservative party believe any more?

Thank you for drawing my attention to Christina Sommers.  I had not heard of her before.

You will find that Simon Sheppard states the anti-feminist case more boldly.
http://thebattlefieldoflove.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=simon+sheppard

1. Are you in favour of repealing the Equality Act 2010?
2. Are you in favour of reintroducing fault in divorce to be reflected in the divorce settlement?
3. To this end, are you in favour of making it compulsory to agree a marriage contract first before people can marry?
4. Are you in favour of stigmatising never married mothers?
5. Would you be prepared to say so publicly and unambiguously?

I guess the answer is a big fat NO.   

Scruton is probably too old and doddery to discuss these subjects now anyway, and has served only to bring Conservatism into disrepute by his dullness and dreariness and complete inability to take any kind of unambiguously moral position on anything at all except ask questions while being shy of answering them himself.  

Moral courage, your name sure ain't Roger Scruton!

If he is no longer fit for purpose and is fit only to be put out to grass, I am perfectly prepared to step into the breach. I am culturally English if nothing else, and am quite prepared to define and articulate the principles of Conservatism. I am also happy to say that no one can be both a feminist and a Conservative, unlike Roger Scruton, who is clearly too afraid to say so, having himself been feminised by decades of feminism and is afraid, probably of his wife and his female friends, relations and daughters if he has any.  A Conservative believes in respecting the institutions of marriage and feminism is all about trashing marriage. Marriage is eugenic, feminism dysgenic.  Dygsenic means that you will preside over the progressive degeneracy of your populace if this cancerous idea, which has now spread to all the major organs of state, is allowed to continue to exist unchecked and unchallenged.

But Roger Scruton is silent.   

Too old and doddery, dreary and dull to dare to discuss feminism or answer my questions.  Roger Scruton: what is he for?

Doctors 'should have the right to kill unwanted or disabled babies at birth' claims Oxford academic

Francesca Minerva, says doctors should have the right to kill newborn babies because they are disabled, too expensive or simply unwanted by their mothers

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2108433/Doctors-right-kill-unwanted-disabled-babies-birth-real-person-claims-Oxford-academic.html#ixzz1nqiM2QWU

Francesca Minerva is a young and pretty philosopher with the courage of her convictions.

I am quite happy to announce that I would abolish infanticide as a crime.  This means I would make it legal for parents to dispose of their own babies up to the age of 12 months.

The Ancient Greeks practised it and so did the Ancient Romans.  Their civilisation did not die out as a result of this practice.  Ancient Athens declined because the Athenians fought too many wars (NeoCons please note), and Rome declined because they caught the ancient form of feminism.

This would be part of my programme of Moral Libertarian Eugenics.

Please note that all my proposals are libertarian in the sense that they repeal a law rather than pass yet another law.

Agricola:  "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government."

A silly question to which you will not be given an answer - the nature consciousness and the purpose of asking silly questions that will not be answered

S11 APING MANKIND at Town Hall Unreserved
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - 18:00
£8 (£7), Members - 10% off

http://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/find-events/science/s11-aping-mankind

The blurb:

"Raymond Tallis questions the claim that a combination of neuroscience and evolutionary theory is sufficient to explain human consciousness, behaviour, culture and society. Join him to hear his argument that we humans are infinitely more interesting and complex than we appear to be when we are represented as essentially biological organisms. By minimizing the difference between ourselves and our nearest primate kin, are we in fact misrepresenting and even degrading humanity?" 

What is it about human consciousness that needs to be explicated beyond the dictionary definition and beyond what I have provided at http://thevoiceofreason-ann.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-answer-to-what-is-consciousness-and.html?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness has a number of silly questions we could ask to which there will be no real answer, viz:

1. Is consciousness a valid concept or a conceptual error?
2. Is it a single unified entity or a collection of distinct entities?
3. How does it relate to language?
4. Can it be explained in terms of the laws of physics?
5. Why are we convinced that other people (or even we ourselves) possess consciousness?
6. Why do we believe that some animals possess consciousness, and is there any way to test this belief?
7. What is the nature of experience, and particularly what is the nature of sensory qualities such as the color red?

If you were to perchance get an answer, it would be so boring, irrelevant and obscure that you wonder why you bothered in the first place.  

Is this branch of philosophy a branch of philosophy whereby the most confident and convincing charlatans can talk utter nonsense for hours, be asked questions and answer them with supreme confidence and leave the uninitiated none the wiser?

Is this branch of philosophy the training ground for confidence tricksters?

Of course humans who are conscious are cleverer than animals who are also conscious.  

Does any more really need to be said about the subject? 

Is Western civilisation rubbish these days because Western philosophy is rubbish? 

Mark Vernon's piece of nonsense in the Guardian

"Mind may be more real than matter

Energy, information or something like consciousness may in fact be the real basic stuff of the cosmos"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/01/mind-matter-consciousness

While I already knew there was very little justice in the world, it is always shocking when a particularly egregious kind of person with a particularly egregious writing style is paid for something so egregiously bland, incoherent, nonsensical and sickeningly empty and futile that it makes you want to vomit, again and again.  

This ugly and dull orange and pink man, Mark Vernon - who calls himself a philosopher, no less! - who deleted my innocuous comments from his blog, is actually being paid to write his rubbish while I am ignored and marginalised, just because I dare to challenge the Liberal Left orthodoxy (whose time is coming to an end and whose cowardly, hypocritical and morally-challenged politicians have delighted us for quite along enough), and also because I am a member of the British National Party.  

There is very little hope that things will change in the immediate future, while I plot to overthrow the government.  In the meantime, I can only register my protest as and when I find the time and energy to do so. 

Every little helps, as they say at Tesco.  

"Mark Vernon Philosophy and Life, 100 Best Blogs 2009, Sunday Times"

Mark Vernon - the philosopher who does NOT believe in free speech

Mark Vernon - part of the School of Life Philosophy of the Blandly Bleeding Obvious http://www.theschooloflife.com/ - an ex-Church of England priest who calls himself a philosopher has deleted all my quite reasonable and civil comments from his blog.  Perhaps my reputation precedes me, or he did not like the "tone" of them.  I therefore wonder if he is up to a philosophical discussion with me on the subject of Free Speech. 

Is he so unmanned he cannot allow them to be displayed at all?  A philosopher who does not believe in free speech is surely a contemptible shadow of a man as well as a philosopher. He may not have much faith in his own powers of argument. So why is he pretending to be wiser than the rest of us? Is he a charlatan? Or a fool or a knave? Or even a coward or a hypocrite? 

You may find his blog - mysteriously hailed as one of "the 100 Sunday Times Best Blogs in 2009" at http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/dotclear/ if you wish to compare the quality of his output with mine.