Remembering Roger Scruton on the one year anniversary of his passing

"Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in."  - Edmund Burke

Sir Roger Scruton died one year ago today, at age 75, and the world is a lesser place with his absence. A one paragraph press statement on his website announced the death of the writer, philosopher, husband, father, and brother following a six month battle with cancer. Months earlier on September 19, 2019 he received the "Defender of Western Civilization award" from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and spoke about "a thing called civilization." 

Sir Roger was a courageous man who in the midst of the Cold War traveled behind the Iron Curtain into Poland and Czechoslovakia to meet with dissidents, and demonstrate his solidarity with them, while risking prison himself.  He helped create "a pool of light" in which they could converse in freedom. He would continue this kind of work for the rest of his life.

He was a 21st century Burkean. Edmund Burke who was born 292 years ago today is viewed as the founder of the British conservative tradition, and Roger Scruton was a continuation of this tradition. Therefore it is interesting to read his 2018 essay on the current President of the United States titled "What Trump Doesn’t Get About Conservatism" in which the late British conservative concludes:

"Conservative thinkers have on the whole praised the free market, but they do not think that market values are the only values there are. Their primary concern is with the aspects of society in which markets have little or no part to play: education, culture, religion, marriage and the family. Such spheres of social endeavor arise not through buying and selling but through cherishing what cannot be bought and sold: things like love, loyalty, art and knowledge, which are not means to an end but ends in themselves.

About such things it is fair to say that Mr. Trump has at best only a distorted vision. He is a product of the cultural decline that is rapidly consigning our artistic and philosophical inheritance to oblivion. And perhaps the principal reason for doubting Mr. Trump’s conservative credentials is that being a creation of social media, he has lost the sense that there is a civilization out there that stands above his deals and his tweets in a posture of disinterested judgment."

We are in the midst of a political and cultural crisis in America, and now is the time to reflect on what is going on, return to first principles, and in the case of conservatives that means to rediscover and embrace Burkean conservatism applying its lessons for reforming and saving democracy in the United States.

Bacardi leads in sustainable rum production while Cuban rum distilleries destroy the environment

Private property rights are human rights.

Source: CubaBrief

Earth Day was celebrated on April 22nd around the world, and Nicola Carruthers writing in The Spirits Business highlighted companies with initiatives to protect the environment and support sustainable development. According to Carruthers, "in 2018, Bacardi teamed up with environmental charity Lonely Whale to clamp down on single-use plastic and eradicate one billion plastic straws by 2020. The Future Doesn’t Suck campaign saw Bacardi remove “non-essential”, non-recyclable single-use plastic across its global supply chain."

.@BACARDI is donating 12,000 bottles of hand sanitizers to police and fire departments in Coral Gables, Hialeah, Homestead, Miami and other areas in South Florida. pic.twitter.com/pHYUOR7Ivr

— Joel Franco (@OfficialJoelF) April 27, 2020

Bacardi shifted some of its production last month to produce hand sanitizer in response to COVID-19, much of which is being given to police, nurses, non-profits and others battling coronavirus on the frontlines. The company has also set up a $ 3 million dollar fund to provide financial support, meals and other necessities to help bar owners and bar staff impacted by the pandemic.

Meanwhile, in Cuba there is a crackdown underway for those who are providing independent information on the situation on the ground. Independent journalists are jailed for doing their job. Amnesty International has issued a second urgent action for "63-year-old independent journalist Roberto Quiñones Haces." He was "imprisoned on 11 September 2019 for “resistance” and “disobedience”, remains in the Provincial Prison of Guantánamo in concerning sanitary conditions, according to reports. His family stated he has also developed health conditions, which may put him at increased risk in face of COVID-19."

Amnesty International is demanding that "Cuban authorities to immediately and unconditionally release [ Roberto Quiñones ] and other prisoners of conscience in the country, amid grave fears over the spread of COVID-19 in Cuba’s prisons." Independent journalists have broken important stories in the past such as the Cuban government's 2012 response to the cholera outbreak that netted independent journalist Calixto Martinez prison time and recognition as a prisoner of conscience. In 2018, Julio Batista was the winner of the King of Spain Journalism Award for his reporting on pollution from Cuba's main rum distillery in a long 2017 investigative piece titled "The dead waters of Havana Club". (An English excerpt of the report is included below.)

Sadly, the communist takeover of Cuba's main rum distillery, and taking of Havana Club from "the Arechabala Family on June 1, 1960 at gun point ended a family rum-making business that had started in 1878 in Cuba. The Arechabala family lost everything and was forced to flee their homeland, with a scant few of their remaining possessions – the precious Havana Club recipe being one of them.

Since the 1980s, liquid wastes have been a major problem for the Ronera. Photo Julio Batista.

Meanwhile, the Castro regime started to sell their stolen version of Havana Club, that today "pumps 1,288 cubic meters of waste liquids into the Chipriona inlet every day, mostly vinasse (a residual liquid remaining from the fermentation and distillation of alcoholic liquors). It has been doing that since the 1990s, although the problems became more acute starting in 2007," according to Julio Batista in his 2017 report.

Ronera Santa Cruz produces 60 million liters per year. More than half are Havana Club products.

Bacardi, founded in Cuba in 1862, has demonstrated over the years a concern for sustainable development and rootedness to Cuba with a multigenerational sense of belonging and protection of their properties, and surrounding communities. The late British philosopher Roger Scruton explained that " for it is only private ownership that confers responsibility for the environment as opposed to the unqualified right to exploit it, a right whose effect we saw in the ruined landscapes and poisoned waterways of the former Soviet empire." Unfortunately, these ruined landscapes and poisoned waterways are found all too often today in Castro's Cuba. The video below is in Spanish, but the images of environmental destruction at Chipriona inlet are understood in any language.

Requiescat in pace Sir Roger Scruton: Remembering a great man of letters who has been called home.

“I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin.” - Russell Kirk, "Why I Am a Conservative," Confessions of a Bohemian Tory: Episodes and Reflections of a Vagrant Career (1963)

Requiescat in pace, Sir Roger Scruton (1944-2020)

Sir Roger Scruton died today, at age 75, and the world is a lesser place with his absence. A one paragraph press statement on his website announced the death of the writer, philosopher, husband, father, and brother following a six month battle with cancer.

Sir Roger was a courageous man who in the midst of the Cold War traveled behind the Iron Curtain into Poland and Czechoslovakia to meet with dissidents, and demonstrate his solidarity with them, while risking prison himself.  He helped create "a pool of light" in which they could converse in freedom. He would continue this kind of work for the rest of his life.

I was introduced to who many describe as "the greatest conservative of our age" around 15 years ago by my friend Aramis Perez, and am grateful for it. In 2013 had the opportunity to meet the conservative writer and philosopher at a Forum 2000 gathering in Prague.  He was gracious, down to earth, and demonstrated his solidarity with Yris Perez Aguilera, a Cuban dissident attending the meeting.

Sir Roger Scruton together with Cuban dissident Yris Perez Aguilera at Forum 2000

Sir Roger's writings on beauty, morality, politics, environmentalism, democracy and education, and the importance of tradition are required reading with both a depth and breadth of knowledge  reminiscent of Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke.

This blog has quoted this man of letters on several occasions over the past ten years, and been influenced by him.  Sir Winston Churchill observed that it was beneficial to read books of quotations, and that in doing so would spark interest in reading more of the person cited. Below is the full quote.

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.” - Winston Churchill

In the spirit of wanting to encourage others to read the works of Sir Roger Scruton and share his views with others, below are some quotes of his that have impacted me over the years. Thanks to the internet some of these quotes are also linked to the essays from which they were excerpted.

"Without tradition, originality cannot exist: for it is only against a tradition that it becomes perceivable. Tradition and originality are two components of a single process, whereby the individual makes himself known through his membership of the historical group" - Roger Scruton, 2000. Modern Culture

"Rights are not secured by declaring them. They are secured by the procedures that protect them. And these procedures must be rescued from the state, and from all who would bend them to their own oppressive purposes." - Roger Scruton, October 16, 2004, "The State Can't Set You Free", The Spectator

"Hayek’s theory of evolutionary rationality shows how traditions and customs (those surrounding sexual relations, for example) might be reasonable solutions to complex social problems, even when, and especially when, no clear rational grounds can be provided to the individual for obeying them. These customs have been selected by the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of social reproduction, and societies that reject them will soon enter the condition of ‘‘maladaptation,’’ which is the normal prelude to extinction." - Roger Scruton "Hayek and conservatism", in Edward Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

"For art cannot live in the world of kitsch, which is a world of commodities to be consumed, rather than icons to be revered. True art is an appeal to our higher nature, an attempt to affirm that other kingdom in which moral and spiritual order prevails. Others exist in this realm not as compliant dolls but as spiritual beings, whose claims on us are endless and unavoidable. For us who live in the aftermath of the kitsch epidemic, therefore, art has acquired a new importance … That is why art matters. Without the conscious pursuit of beauty we risk falling into a world of addictive pleasures and routine desecration, a world in which the worthwhileness of human life is no longer clearly perceivable." -Roger Scruton, May 5, 2009, Beauty

"I argue that environmental problems must be addressed by all of us in our everyday circumstances, and should not be confiscated by the state. Their solution is possible only if people are motivated to confront them." - Roger Scruton, December 4, 2012, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism 

"When we ask questions like this, are we naturally democratic? And what is the place of the democratic ethos in education? We realize that we are pulled between two competing forces. “Competition it seems to me has two different forms, one the natural form, the other the artificial form that we are all hoping for. The natural form of competition is that in which one person strives to dominate the rest and that person, if he succeeds, will then impose upon the rest his view of things. However, we hope for another form of competition, a non-natural form of competition in which the person who succeeds doesn’t want to dominate but simply to be heard. That you compete in politics for example in order that your voice should be heard and then you make room for the voices of others, that it seems to me is what the democratic instinct is."- Roger Scruton, September 13, 2015 "Are we naturally un-democratic" Forum 2000

My colleague Aramis Perez noted over social media that Sir Roger Scruton died on the same day Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke was born 291 years ago today. This day will now be marked as one to remember and honor two conservative icons.

Requiescat in pace, Sir Roger Scruton (1944-2020)