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#061 - Mark Dooley - On Roger Scruton & Why We Need To Discover The Politics Of Home · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking with Dr.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Dooley.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mark is an Irish philosopher, author, and journalist who has taught at the National University of Ireland, Maymouth, and at University College Dublin, where he was John Henry Newman Scholar in Theology.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: He has been a columnist for both the Sunday Independent and the Irish Daily Mail and is currently a contributing editor to the European Conservative magazine.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: His many books include The Roger Scruton Reader, Why Be a Catholic, Moral Matters, A Philosophy of Homecoming, and Conversations with Roger Scruton.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: In 2022, he edited and published Against the Tide, the best of Roger Scruton's columns, commentaries, and criticism, and he is Sir Roger Scruton's literary executor.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Mark and I think out loud about the philosophical legacy of Roger Scruton, why it is true to say that the culture war is really a spiritual war, whether politicians in Western nations love or hate the countries they govern, why home and belonging is important to every person, and the impact of immigration on national identity.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: We also talk about the future of British and Irish relations, the tension between traditional values and modern ideologies, whether there's space for conservatism in revolutionary times, whether Roger Scruton would support a counter-revolution against progressive ideologies, the significance of the West's cultural inheritance from Christian civilization, and its impact on modern society, why human life is sacred, the need for a connection to the past, and the dangers to societies that disregard their cultural heritage and much, much more.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: You'll hear that Mark provides an angle to the culture wars not often heard.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And as a man who was friends with Roger Scripton, famous for being conservative in his philosophy, and Jacques Derrida for being more postmodern, Mark is not an obvious partisan.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And as ever, classmates, please like, subscribe, follow, and share.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And let's grow the show together.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Dooley, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very glad to be here, John.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, likewise, thanks for joining me in this ethereal digital realm here.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I am glad to join me.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I first learned of you as I was reading a collection of essays that you had edited uh uh posthumously for Roger Scruton, uh one of uh I would say not just um England and Britain's uh finest philosophers, but but arguably one of the finest philosophers in in the Western tradition uh of his era, there's there's no doubt about it, in my view.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the book was called Against the Tide, uh, and a very, very rousing, a very rousing book and showed Scruton's um Scruton's legacy to the philosophical tradition and and how to uh and how to uh I suppose push back against uh groupthink and and a mob mentality.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll get into that in the fullness of time.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, Scruton was probably one of the people who found himself at the centre of what we'd now call the culture wars, and had been uh an uh a casualty of those himself, though he he managed to find his way through.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: But before we speak about Roger Scruton and indeed your relationship with him and Jacques Derrida, someone who is also a philosophical heavyweight in his own right, you have written extensively in your own work about culture wars.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you quote, say, let us avoid talk of a culture war when what we are engaged in is nothing less than a lethal spiritual conflict.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we in a spiritual conflict rather than a culture war?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because those who oppose uh the traditional values and those who oppose custom and convention, which have always been the guiding lights for uh real culture, by which I mean they've always helped us to advance to the future with a spotlight to the past, or shining a spotlight to the past as our guide.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Those who oppose this don't offer a rival culture, they offer destruction, devastation.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: They their intent has always been, as revolutionaries uh from time immemorial have wanted, to tear down the culture and to replace it with some abomination.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in this case, I mean, even even those who first uh initiated or inaugurated this style of uh uh devastation, let's say the French revolutionaries, they were very cultured people.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um they uh the their their aim was not to obviously was not to uh have a a revolution that ended in terror, although most do.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Their aim was to you know establish another form of life, you know, um, and uh for good or for ill, but um it certainly wasn't to destroy uh everything that had gone before, although they made a good fist of doing that with many of the institutions, most notably the church.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but in this day and age, what we've got are people who uh repudiate entirely their heritage, repudiate entirely the fact that they might actually be made by something other than themselves, um, and want to recast identity uh from the most basic biological level as something that is uh up for grabs.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now that seems to me that doesn't that's that is not a culture.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's no the the the the that's not built on any sacred text, it's not built on a legacy or a heritage.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's built on some sort of you know uh demonic cry for uh you know destroying the fabric of a civilization which is founded within um or on religious values and uh recasting it as uh something barren and um uh empty, uh something that's given over to death rather than to over to life.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about a repudiation of heritage.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I suppose one thing which Roger Streeton made very popular within within public philosophy was the politics of home.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the argument he advanced repeatedly was that we've are ruled by a political class and uh more informally by a cultural elite who, as you said, repudiate heritage.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually driven not by a sense of home, but usually for more abstract ideals of uh justice that are uh global in scale and are um uh usually backed by some kind of social engineering programs uh that are in line with their ideological proclivities, and he and and and often they worked counter to the the interests of where it was they were supposed to be governing or where it was that they were from.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he called these people eukophobic, uh an ancient Greek uh term, which to say, you know, a uh the fear of home or kind of hatred of home.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what you're you're an Irishman and you're in Ireland right now.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: How how would you say the state of politics is in Ireland?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you you are are your politicians eukophobic?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, uh why, if that's not too much of a leading question?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's very complex in Ireland.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's much easier to talk about it in terms of Great Britain and so on.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: But to give it my best shot, um, and complex because of our uh difficult you know history.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yes, I've you know, in my columns in the European Conservative, I have labelled my own country the woke capital of Europe.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um because our politicians, such as they are, um, have embraced every woke cause that's going.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and not only that, but they've tried to be ahead of the bandwagon with each one of them, you know.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so anything that you see on the horizon uh with uh you know a banner that reads woke, you can be sure that the Irish were holding the banner.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it is it is it has destroyed the the cultural and social fabric of the country in the short term, since around 2014, 2015.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yet the ordinary people still have a sense of belonging, a sense of home, as all ordinary people do deep in their hearts.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: We don't think globally, uh we are not global entities, we are local entities.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: We attach ourselves to places, to common places that we can nurture and cherish, and which provide the the basis of our memories and our cohabitation.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's that's that in in broadly speaking, that is what our you know a home is.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we are driven by that, we have an instinctual need for that.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody identifies themselves as a global citizen.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can say that in your uh when you're in front of a group of woke students and uh you know get cheered on.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And but when you go home, you're you still go home to your family and you still talk about your neighbors and your community and so on.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And those are the things that will draw on your resources for immediate attention and affection.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we've in this country we've seen recently uh backlash against an attempt for one example, one minor example, but it is significant nonetheless.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: There was an attempt by the government to remove uh mothers or motherhood from the constitution, a referendum.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was resoundly defeated by the people.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it led to the um resignation of then Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh it was uh proof positive, as if we needed any, that in the undergrowth, the people who don't have a voice uh in the you know on the the woke uh loudspeaker, they are saying enough is enough.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is our home.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: We have lived this way, we have for for for for for the for our history, we we have children to bring up in this world, and we don't want them being brought up like that.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, or with with that value systems, if you can call it that.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So um like all countries in the West now, there is a tension between, as you call them, the elites, uh uh who desire uh this kind of uh uh utopia uh where we all abandon our um our you know our our sense of home uh for love of the world or love of the cosmos or love of whatever it is or love of creation.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and those of us who still cherish uh homely things, and especially this time of year, uh when people return to their homes, their physical homes from the social sphere, and they write they they they they they try to recreate at Christmas time and at Thanksgiving in the States that sense of belonging that is so inherent in the human condition.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's the battle, and those are the battle hands.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a spiritual battle because home is a spiritual entity, you know.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's it's you know what Benedict XVI used to call the homeland of the heart, you know.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it's when all when when no matter where you are, uh you still have that sense of home.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even if you're not particularly attached to a place, you you want to belong to a people, to a time and to a place.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting you talk about belonging and linking it back to the point you made about we're not global citizens, we all belong somewhere.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is I uh as a brief biographical interlude here, I I left school early at 17.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely had a sense of who I was and the part of the country as from Northumberland's in England.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um went off to Manchester uh because I wasn't particularly happy about my prospects with no qualifications.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And anyway, as I was working my way up the ladder and started to find myself in more white collar jobs, uh, I found myself rubbing shoulders with people who were graduates.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I was never part of the university system.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I certainly noticed there was a difference between how I saw the world and how they saw the world, but because I felt like my status was quite low and that these seemed like quite up and coming people, I started to align myself with these views.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I started to read The Guardian quite a lot as about my only source of information, uh, as well as the odds Noam Chomsky book and various other uh heavily left-leaning uh literature and uh media.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And over time I found myself using words like global citizen because I, you know, I started to do little bits of travel and I would expand and I'd tell people, you know, I feel at home anywhere.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, later on I started I did some online degrees.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, not being part of that university thing, meant I maintained a level of independence, but I did go in with a certain mindset and it started to fall apart for various reasons.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And when it really started to fall apart was I'd been learning German in a Mike class uh whilst I was living in Leeds and decided before I moved to London I'd have a sabbatical in Germany, but I thought I might stay forever because I know the language really well.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was also of the view, as many people were at that time of that age, that um Germany was this beacon uh and we were just the the back the backwards British.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went to Germany, lived with some Germans, had a great time, learned the language really, really well.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that became clear was not only was I not a global citizen, but I certainly wasn't German.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized that I was British and that I'd been pretty ungrateful about the inheritance that I'd received from the country, that I'd effectively repudiated it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was the I was the oikophobe um through and through.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I would always be talking it down.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: But things just started to fall apart and my worldview started to shift from that moment and uh and and found myself certainly longing for a belonging.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I I find it remarkable that we do find within media uh a kind of celebration of um the disintegration of home in some way.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw I saw a clip uh from Irish TV recently, actually, and this is linking, I think, to the heavy emigrate immigration that you have going on at the moment.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we do in Britain.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there was a I don't know who the presenter was, but there was an Irish presenter, and he was with uh someone of West African heritage uh who had an Irish inflected accent, and the interview was about uh the the the West Africans saying, Ireland's changed, it's different now.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's people from here, there, everywhere.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then he kind of celebrated that the the the white people are going extinct.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and there was no challenge to that.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I think what we're starting to see in the culture is that even people who wanted to hold on to those um the respectable views that allowed the taboos to to remain, uh, with regards to not wanting to make people feel excluded from what it means to be Irish or British, is now I think people are starting to see that um peoples equals culture at scale, and you can't necessarily have an Ireland if you're going to celebrate the uh diminishing of uh the Irish people, the indigenous Irish people.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what what what would you say is the uh current um understanding of all of this within within the the Irish uh electorate?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh do you do you find that you have people uh reaching out for solutions to this?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh is this a conversation that is being had or is is it not?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a conversation that is being had by force of circumstance because up to quite recently it was a conversation that was taboo.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but now, thanks to uh uh a pretty awful riot that took place last uh a year um around this time, uh were terrible devastation by tugs actually.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it was spurred on by an attack uh on school children by an immigrant, um very complex situation.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um wasn't uh it wasn't a normal, just gratuitous attack.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but nonetheless, it was it was uh it was an kickstart of this riot, and all of a sudden, as usual, uh in in Western countries, something happens, and then there's this rear guard action uh which produces you know um well now in order to um uh retain power, we've got to address this problem.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly, because they have uh abandoned um those who feel alienated in their own land um for so long, uh, to switch around and to say, well, now we're on your side and we're going to do something about this situation um uh seems uh kind of uh well pathetic to most people really, but nonetheless, they were glad to hear it.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, funny enough, uh the the strong talk about immigration uh was good and it it it produced um you know a positive result in in the polls in advance of a general election which we just had.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: However, the the I the item itself drifted down to something like uh 7% of those uh polled in advance of the election said this was the primary concern.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was during the summer uh the hot issue.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: But when other issues such as the economy drift in and cost of living and uh Donald Trump and all of these other things with our shortest attention span, uh this um this drifted down in people's interests and concerns.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: However, it is a subject that will not go away.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, for as long as what it did do, however, was it opened up the space whereby the conversation could be had.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was no longer a taboo conversation.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a very uh it's it's a very important conversation.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's an important conversation because it really does determine who we want to be, what we are, and where we go from here.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um so, yes, that's where it stands now.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all European countries are experiencing similar turbulence, and um uh thanks to you know populations standing up and saying enough is enough, uh, we are going to have a say, not in a racist way, but in a way that, like, you know, we have to, as I uh, you know, Derrida himself used to say this, uh, champion of those who might oppose uh those who espouse oichophilia, not okay, okay is is is love of home.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he used to say, How can you be a host if you do not have a home?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if we do not preserve the home, if we do not preserve what we are and who we are.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: How can we welcome people into that?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because giving away our home, as certain of his um uh his his French contemporaries, um, and abandoning it to this to the the open border uh policy, these universalist claims, uh, means you don't have a home to give.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it becomes a free-for-all, it becomes a non-entity, uh, not something with which you cannot identify uh and it becomes um destitute and derelict.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: So to avoid that, we must speak.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: The notion of needing to have a home before you can welcome people into it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen quite a lot of videos on uh online of the response of communities in in rural Ireland where there have been plantations, and I I I think that sounds like a very strong word, but you can see aerial footage of um big construction sites where um large numbers of migrants who are being bust in and flown in the various international agreements are being housed and and put up against the will of the locals who who don't don't want this.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're primarily uh young men who are joining uh or come into the country up from all over the world.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: These facilities are being guarded by um the local police force.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see that people feel betrayed, that they never had an option, that they've just got to go along with it and accept it.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we're starting to see that in in Britain too.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are videos coming out of council meetings where people are questioning the housing of large numbers of uh the asylums.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Seekers that have come over on the small boats in hotels, sometimes near schools, um being whole hotels being rented out and then being guarded uh by uh immigrants themselves.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what's quite interesting is is linking all of this.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to get your view on British and Irish relations uh in the wake of welcoming, well not welcoming in, but receiving uh a great many different peoples from everywhere but say the this this archipelago that we call home.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because I saw I saw a meme online.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, meme seems meme seem to spread the culture a lot these days, if that's what you can call it.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a meme which had a a picture of um uh an Anglo, a picture of a of a Celtic person, and one of them said something like uh Fenian, stupid Fenian, and the other one said something derogatory back about uh the English and the British.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then um and then there was the next line was them with um with a bunch of people who've just arrived who are saying different things in insult to them, and then the final set being those two looking at each other saying, huh, maybe we have uh more in common than we thought.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And indeed, there was a there was a big protest up in Belfast uh by uh it was a pro-Palestine protest, and there were various flags being flown on that side, trans flags, Palestine flags, socialist worker flags, and on the other side, there was the Union flag alongside an Irish tricolor flag, and they were on the same team, and they were they were waving them together, saying these are the these are the peoples of this island.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do do you think there is uh something shifting beneath the the grounds there in Ireland about uh relations between the different different peoples that have historically been part of it?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you see, I I think that it all depends on who you're speaking to, of course.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh the people you see that you mentioned at the beginning the you've got to separate out uh media voices from everyday voices, ordinary voices, voices that are not heard.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um you mentioned Noam Chomsky, who uh came up in a very nifty phrase called manufactured consent.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh you know, I I I I I I think that the media is always into manufacturing consent, you know, to their consenting to their own ideals of the world.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um so but the people who don't get a hearing ordinarily uh on official channels uh identify with anyone who respects home.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's an Irish rural person who is attached to the land, is attached to ancestry, is attached to heritage, is attached to custom, is attached to belonging, is attached to family, is attached to the homeland, they will identify with the same person, no matter where they are.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um now you don't necessarily have to be rural.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can be a city dweller and see the destruction of home everywhere, uh, because this our cities are undergoing social experiments, left, right, and center, in all of the institutions.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: But you can still identify with people who um um who hold similar values.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, those who who turn you know turn their noses up at the likes of um reform voters, let's say.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I'm I'm interested in reform voters.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: You might not be interested in reform, but I'm interested in reform voters.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see what type of people these are, what makes them tick, what are their what are their local interests and and concerns?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you will invariably find that they are the very same as the people who don't have a party in Ireland to represent them.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's no party of of uh of a similar ill in Ireland currently, um, minor, minor uh one maybe, uh composed primarily of independence, but nothing of substance yet.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um but that will grow in time, I suspect.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, I'm interested in that because you know, these are the people who hitherto have been silenced for four decades um um and are now being heard because the political establishment has to listen because their vote is being collected.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm interested not in hearing what Nigel Farage has to say, but I'm interested in the in hearing what his supporters have to say.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because there you find the true concern, there you find the true instinct when it comes to preserving home and what that means for the British people.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I was speaking to a politician the other day in in London, uh not not uh on the record, and uh we were talking a little bit about some of the discourse you see online when people are disappointed, perhaps when, say, Farage is now giving interviews where his tone might have softened in a few areas, but that's not what people want.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then they're on it's on certain media channels which not every single person is watching.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I and and the politician said to me, So it doesn't really matter.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: We might be unhappy with that, or there might be a softening here or there, but it's a niche concern for those who are very online.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, go and speak to the people in the weather spoons or out at work, and they effectively just care about what this is, which is a vehicle to put a shot across the bowels of the thing that's not working and which they've been trying to say is not working for a long time.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: So to them, it just it represents something which is the opposite to this thing which they don't like and have had forced on them for so long.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I I think Mark, bringing in Roger Scruton a little bit, he he was a he was a a conservative who who um uh who made the point that conservatism is is not an ideology, it's a disposition.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's something which would those with a disposition would, in the face of social engineering or some big policy idea, would say or perhaps shout out, stop, wait.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit like Chesterton's fence, don't remove it until you know what it's for.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Suspicious of social engineers, utopians.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's also fair to say that conservatism has been on a hiding to nothing in the wake of liberal progressivism, Islamism, mass immigration, the rise of sectarian politics more broadly.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I know we can never really ascribe certain thoughts to someone who's no longer with us, but what do you think scrutin would make of calls that you can find, particularly uh on the American conservative side, that are saying it's counter-revolution that we need insofar as it's rooting various practices and ideals out of institutions?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's stopping funding towards institutions who are uh undermining all of the values uh and the traditions, the customs you've been talking about, and it's about going after where the money is.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh do you think do you think Roger Scruton would recognize that there might be a need for uh a counter-revolutionary movement to root this out, or would he suggest something else?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he probably wouldn't use that term, but he would uh subscribe to uh you know uh wholesale uh eradication of the worst excesses of this movement.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, the the the destruction of education, for example.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Education was always a primary interest of his, um, because he who controls the classroom controls the future of the country.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh therefore uh to see the degradation which is spread like wildfire through the curricula of the Western nations uh was devastating for him.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um because you know you you firstly when you when you start messing around with uh and dumbing down and eviscerating and uh then you know injecting uh a child's curriculum with uh kind of a this this uh demonic, or as I've referred to it before, uh, ideology, but whereby the the the whole construct of what it means to be human is is is is is reformulated as a as a benign sort of uh curiosity for you, you know, to learn in the classroom.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um that that is not something that you you we can take lightly and say, well, now that's an accepted part of where we are, and you know, we can leave that and no, you can't leave that intact.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to counter that with everything that you've got and show why that is intrinsically wrong, not only from a scientific perspective, but from a moral and a sociological and a religious perspective.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because once you start tinkering with things like that, and once you start tinkering with things like history, and once you start tinkering like, you know, with the famous uh we thought it was bad when the famous French um feminist philosopher uh Irriger, Lucy Irrigare, came out and said that uh Einstein's famous equation um was a was a uh was a was a was a sext equation, you know.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um that was thought you're one one often would you could uh really easily dismiss that as as the kind of ravings of of the cut the cultural elite in Paris uh you know of a certain time.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: But that has become the norm.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So no, you don't you don't look at that benignly.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: You say no, this has to be countered because this is detaching uh children from uh their their their primary source, their sacred source, it's detaching them from history, it's detaching them from real culture, it's detaching them from memory, it is making them home haters, uh oikophobes.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so what type of future are we setting ourselves up to endure uh with this?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: So there's one example of an institution, solely education, both in the university and in the schools, which needs root and branch uh reform, now uh robust reform.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I know Donald Trump has set his sights on this, but I think that's the type of thing, I don't think Roger Scruton, uh, you know, calm and all as he was, would would um uh would say, now check your horses a little.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this needs to be done gently and lightly.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, it doesn't.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because for every child that is um uh put through that, you're you're setting up another disaster 20 years from now.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Dear classmate John here.
• 33:21
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• 33:24
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• 33:32
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• 33:36
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• 33:48
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• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing, thanks for showing your support.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Mark, you have made many positive cases for the uh cultural inheritance of Christian civilization.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh maybe let's delve into that a little bit more in the context of those who would dismiss it.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's think about the the moral and cultural revolution, as Peter Hitchens would call it, that's taken place since the Second World War, where we now live in an unrecognizable time compared to our forebears.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, someone I just interviewed for the second time in the podcast, Ed West, the historian and journalist, he says there's there's every chance that the generations that have followed from the Second World War onwards, there's more difference between that point and before than there would have been from uh the pre-second world war and the medieval times because of the level of continuity with how we saw the world um and the various customs, rituals, traditions, morals that we held.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, if you're someone who is trying to dismiss that, you're going to probably characterize the world as uh oppressive and that this liber this this uh move toward liberty and uh self-actualization has been much, much better for the human condition than than what came before, which was stuffy and oppressive.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to those people?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've made the point that um the uh you used Matthew Arnold's words, which was that um the best that has been thought and said was what came out of Christian civilization.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: What did you mean by that?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was, and it was everyone, every major intellectual up to a certain point uh in the 20th century, every major intellectual that preceded them thought that or felt you know believed that, believed what Matthew Arnold said.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um they believed that you could not have a successful society unless you imbued children, and thus the citizens of those societies, with the cultural inheritance which flowed downstream from Christian thought.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we are, you know, the the the the West is Christian.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's as simple as that.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you may not like that, but then you're going to spend your life repudiating that notion and saying that that's wrong and that uh we have to fight against this, and thus you're reaffirming it all the while.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I I often love you know Nietzsche's or uh Hegel's um observation that you affirm that which you deny.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: They constantly keep alive the things that they want to destroy by uh you know um uh predicating their identity on opposition to it.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: So um so we flow downstream from that great heritage, and even those atheists uh a point that Roger used to make consistently, those atheists, those atheist intellectuals um of the the 19th century, who didn't go for the you know the theological uh basis of Christianity still felt despite like John Stuart Mill, for example, still felt despite the the um the challenges that he was making to the the the the the the status quo, still felt that you couldn't have a society without the religious and christian constructs that were in place.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, because the i it I mean I I I even see that uh um uh uh Dawkins now is coming around to that view, uh however belatedly, you know, because the point is you in order to have a successful society, you have to have people who recognize that we have points in human life that are sacred, that not all can be profane as they would have it today.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: There are sacred moments such as births and deaths, marriages, uh you know, lost loves, uh children growing up and all the rites of passages that they must uh undergo.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: And all of this is celebrated within communities and given a kind of a halo of perfection through the religious norms and institutions that are there.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the the they link us to the past, but not only, they link us to the dead, they link us to the great heroes of the faith who stand before us as role models.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: We call them saints, they are role models of perfection, moral perfection for for for us downstream for them, or indeed those of us who stand in their shadow.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we are linked to the as Redmond Burke most beautifully put it, you know, society is not a contract between the living only, but a living, but a contract between the living, the dead, and the unborn.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: So those constructs, those religious and Christian constructs, link us to all of that, which is why when you walk into a church, for example, you're not just walking into a building, you're walking into memory, the living embodiment of memory, memory of the dead, memory of the of those who uh stood on those altars before you, who laid down their lives for them.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you're bound together to a sacred place, by a sacred place, and in a sacred place.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and from that sacred place um went forth the generations which preceded you, and to a lesser extent, those uh who will succeed you today.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the importance of this cannot, cannot be underestimated.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: And anybody who thinks that we can forge forward without uh looking to this, um to safeguard society, to usher society forward on its next great um movement, um is deluded, in my opinion.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: That that sense of being in a place where others have been before, and you were you were making allusions to worship and um and I suppose in that respect uh even as someone who's uh coming up to my own wedding day next year, is it was never in doubt that we would choose the more traditional approach and speak the same words that everyone has done before and the same vows uh in the eyes of gods, because that's how it is that you come to do the the the union of souls uh and and make those commitments.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: But uh it's very powerful when you do find yourself um in those moments where you realize that it isn't just about you, and many others have gone before you who are no longer here, and you even get that when you that that that sense when you go into those really ancient places.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the first times I had this wave come over me of realising what you just laid out there, that that contract between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born, is I'd gone on a I mean it was partly driven by um uh wanting to understand a bit about why England has churches on every street corner and why we had the the morals and the mores we do.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went on this ecclesiastical tour.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'd made for myself some of the ruined monasteries.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at the time I wasn't a a a Christian, I had been a militant atheist of the Dawkinsian type for sure.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I found myself uh going around North Yorkshire and um I spent some time in Ampleforth Abbey.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was a pretty uh revelatory experience.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh ushered into uh a mass and uh um I'll I'll save the rest for another time.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I went to visit this this church that had been around since I think something like the four or five hundreds it was it was built.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um now clearly it was more uh a structure that was built later on, but the the the foundations were still there, and they're built by um, or at least they were uh they were made famous by St.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Chad.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there was uh it's in Lastingham in North Yorkshire, and in the cellar, it's still got the same layout as when he was there.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and indeed his tomb is in there.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And walking in, and again, this is before I'd even really read around all of this stuff, is there was just this sense that this was something bigger and deeper than I'd ever get my head around.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose my question to you, Mark, is you talked about how the West is Christian, whether we like it or not, and we can spend our lives repudiating it.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: To take Ed West's point further, the the uh break between what came before the Second World War and afterwards is so huge that if someone was cryogenically frozen, as I think he's put it before, was woken up 70 years later, he would think he was in another country or in another universe because we have started to invert a lot of the ideals that we had had through generations because of Christianity.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you've talked about the culture of death, for example, and I'd suspect if people saw the cultural discourse around abortion and euthanasia or assisted suicide, uh, they would be really shocked.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, my my question to you is in this age of the machine, as many have called it, scrutiny you, Paul King's North, where we're living in a perpetual present, we're constantly distracted, we're moving around between apps, we're choosing to amuse ourselves to death, uh, which is probably uh not too hyperpolic, but perhaps it is.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's possible for people to one recognize that that inheritance, that bond, these deeper things?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even to have a sense, those, those revelatory moments, those transcendental moments.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then beyond that, to even recognize that where we've come from, that it's actually worth preserving.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you think we're coming up to a bit of a sliding doors moment where the further we go along this path you've been talking about, this path of repudiation, that we'll lose the ability to do that and and to to recognize its virtues?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting indeed because um uh weird rest is definitely right.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and this is a result of primarily movements in philosophy, I'm ashamed to say, um, that uh enshrined all of this uh uh kind of professional nonsense um uh through the works of you know early continental philosophers that were taken up by uh mainstream uh media and universities and and pushed then as an agenda.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh but so he's right there.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um that there is a lingering remnant, as you as you discovered in your own life, of this in every village um in the West, across the West, no matter how far the repudiation has gone, no matter how intense it is, there is a lingering spirit of it in every village, in every town, in every city.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: You drive through Paris, for example, and you see the beautiful cathedrals, almost empty, but they stand there as a reminder of who you, as French people, are and were and can be.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then the likes of Notre Dame opens up again, and uh people uh find for one brief instance instant, they find that spirit welling up in them.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's no longer something distance that stands on the horizon, you know, the the cathedral that you pass in the cathodic car.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's part of who you are again, not to die down in a week or two, as it always does, and then move on to something else in this age of destruction.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, but nonetheless, it ignites a flame.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I when people come to me with stories of despair and how are we going to, when I speak in public, for instance, the first question I'm always asked is how are we going to reverse the devastation?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: How can we ever roll back the tyranny of destruction?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, what can we do in hand-wringing and all of this?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: My answer is simple.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Saint Paul, Paul of Tarsus, stood before the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire, uh, of all things, with a small motley crew of apostles who carried his cloaks and his sticks and his papyrus uh around uh the empire.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he had a word what he called, he says, We are a remnant who are being slaughtered and battered and bruised and tortured and shipwrecked all day long for the glory of Christ.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: But we count it all rubbish for just to know him, to know Christ.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: It seemed hopeless, you know, it seemed hopeless, and yet the house churches were there.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: The spirit, just like we have now, the spirit was still there in every little town he went into.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: There were Christians.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now it took 300 years, I'll grant you.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: But eventually the walls of Rome fell and Christianity stepped into the breach.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: One example.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: So example two is Roger Scruton's own life.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: When he went to the to the Iron Curtain countries in the 1980s to give hope to the hopeless, uh, he went as a uh to preach uh under underground seminars, and I used preach purposely because uh that's what he was doing.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: He was preaching hope uh to to to the uh to the enslaved to the the the Marxist dystopia, to people like Faklav Havel and ordinary people like priests and poets and chimney sweeps, all of whom assembled in these underground seminars.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he went there uh to teach Aristotle and uh aesthetics, because that was going to guide them back to the future, as it were.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they would embrace when they came from the catacombs and reclaimed their homes, their ancient homelands, which had been destroyed and devastated in the name of some utopian scheme, universalist scheme, by the communists.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Much more devastated than what uh some would say than we have now, although not as lethal spiritually, in my opinion, because the the the old structures were still hankered after.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um the people didn't embrace their enslavement with uh with the with the you know euphoric cries, such as our own do.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, uh the the monolith was there, and I remember at the same time saying, This can never possibly end.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is with us for eternity.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: He did too.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the secret police, as you probably know the story in um in the Czech lands of Indian Prague, eventually got a hold of him after he left the one of the seminars one evening, threw him down a staircase, beat him up, imprisoned him, exiled him the next day, and marched him across the border at gunpoint, and put him on, yes, and I kid you not, the index of undesirable persons, as it was as it was called.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he returned four years later to a free Czech Republic, ruled by the very same people that were in the underground.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we've got to look forward to.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: All it takes is for one event, one, you know, uh such as the the, as I was referring earlier on, such as the event in Dublin last year, uh, such as you know, the the election of Trump in America and the rise of ordinary Americans again uh to reclaim their heritage.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: All it takes is just I mean, who would have thought at the zenith of uh you know um of Biden's victory back in 2020 that we'd be where we are today?
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, no, no, you don't be hopeless, you don't despair, you don't say, oh, it's gone forever.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: How can we ever get the the the the youth to embrace the fact that they come from somewhere rather than nowhere?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: And to be citizens is as Scruton used to put it, of somewhere rather than nowhere.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh our nothingness.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, you don't don't ever fall into that despair.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: You keep living your life as if the whole world shared your values.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: And because it's so unique these days uh and so novel, people will look at you and they'll say, Hey, I want to be like that.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I want to do that type of thing, I want to live that way.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll be surprised at how quickly the whole thing could turn around.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: Mark, that was uh that was a very rousing response.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I uh know the importance of of role models, and I think if there's uh any any hope to be had, uh we don't necessarily want to invest it all in in one person, but if there are enough people that are trying to live as uprightly as possible, live the right way, turn their back on what you've called the culture of destruction and death.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think we could yes, we could turn the tide.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I think I think what's probably important to bring across here, this isn't just an idea of conservative versus liberal, like this this notion of going out to the catacombs, as it were, to to uh withdraw from a bit of a crazy world, but ultimately keep the flame alive before re-entering again.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: I have a sneaking suspicion it goes much more broadly than those with conservative inclinations.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, you you see these uh these alliances, even if they're informal between, you know, particularly here in Britain, between old Labour types and conservatives, who look around and go, what is this?
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's unrecognizable.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they find themselves on panel discussions largely agreeing.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now they know that one day the election day will come up and uh they might not always agree, but I think people are typically seeing that the world which we've come to live under is not particularly good for human flourishing.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right, John.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say, sorry to cut across here, I would say, for example, yeah, uh George Orwell is precisely the type of person you're talking about.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: He was a he was an old leftist who was a patriot.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And his you look at his essays in Politics and the English Language, for example, uh sorry like politics in the English language as one example, or you you look at his sarcastic comments about these people uh who uh you know sit in the luxury of the West and support Stalin, for example, um, sit in the coffee houses of of Western cities and cheer on the Reds.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, that was totally unpatriotic.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the old left had no truck with that.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, Roger Scruton at the end of his life um forged uh his father and himself at a very difficult uh uh in my book Conversations with Roger Scruton, he goes into this in great detail.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have the um you know the famous line from that that that opening conversation that we had.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was not a happy home, he said, of his time with Jack Scruton, his dad, and who was an old socialist uh uh school teacher, rather maniacal character.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: But um he forged an alliance with them at the end of his days because they both recognized one being now you know conservative, very famous conservative at this point, and still this frustrated old schoolteacher with socialist inclinations, that their common home in terms of architecture was being despoiled.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, Roger wrote extensively on architecture, and he saw that as as central to the maintenance of home.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but so too did Jack's group, despite their differences.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so the the attempt to save High Wickham is one example from that that where the childhood home was from the destruction of um of postmodern architects uh was was something that brought them very close in the end of the end of their days, and they spoke on common platforms and so on.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Remarkable thing to happen.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the old left certainly has common alliance with traditional conservatives uh when it comes to repudiating uh the the woke agenda, when it comes to repudiating postmodernism, when it comes to repudiating icophobia.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um now, I will say this too.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um you look, for example, at this one phenomenon which points to how salvation can be had, and that is and it's only one, and I'm not saying people ought to do this, but it's it's an interesting sociological observation.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: When the then Pope Benedict XVI took the restrictions off the Latin Mass, for example, uh in 2007.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: The congregations of those masses in Catholic in Catholicism have boomed and have boomed ever since.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they have boomed with uh young people.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: Young university educated uh people.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there was a time when you'd find only the the legal types uh and the professional types going against the grain of Vatican II and attending.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now you go into these churches, and if such such as they're allowed to be had in churches under the pontificate of Francis, but you go into these places where the mass is celebrated, and you see the you see churches the way uh that they used to be, bulging at the seams, but primarily with these young, uh sophisticated people who not only recognize the spiritual value of this and the mystical value of it, but they also recognize the aesthetic value of it.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because, in it, of course, central to it is beauty as a doorway to the sacred and the opening up of the divine uh in and through beauty.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they contrast that with the world outside the church doors.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: All they have to do, I remember taking uh my own son, my eldest son, uh, he served at the Lefton Nurse for a time when those restrictions were lifted.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, he I never had to teach him about the degradation of our culture.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: He formed that judgment by himself just through experience.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like what Aristotle used to say uh in the Nickmachean Ethics.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: You don't teach children morality, they don't they won't know what you're talking about.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you start going on about the moral law, they look of you look at you as if you're an alien.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: So what you do, says Aristotle, is you show them the courageous person, you show them the wise person, you show them the honorable person, and you say, imitate that.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so they they they they they they see the appearance of the person, and they say, and they contrast it with the the awfulness elsewhere, and they say, no, no, that's the truth.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: That is the authentic thing.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: I see it now, and that is what I'm going to pursue.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you walk out and you see the degradation of the cities, and you see the degradation of the culture, you say, No, I have seen the truth, which is why Jesus can stand before us and say, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I, I'm a person.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Imitate me, do as I do.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: So when the the young person walks out of these uh sacred settings and they see uh the the the the aesthetics of our world, such as they are, they say, No, that's rubbish.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: I want the reality, I want the authentic, and that's where I'm going from now on, and that's who I am.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you see, when an avenue of re of of reality and authenticity is opened up to the youth, they unplug, they want to unplug because there's something deep within us that wants to connect with reality, with truth.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe try to say that we're hardwired for truth, but we are.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: So those who say that we're in a post-truth era, again, are are are um uh get comfortable with uh you know delusion.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: But truth there is, and it's there to be had and it's there to be seen.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: And once you see it, you can't unsee it.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: Reality always wins, as they say.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: But before I let you go, there's a question I like to ask all of my guests, which is what have you changed your mind on in the course of your life that was big, weighty, something which you thought would stand the test of time.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's an absolute, but then things changed.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what was it that made you change your mind?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: Something very similar to your own experience.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was uh I I beg I was very devoted to all of the things as a youngster, to all of the things that we've spoken about today.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I took my detour into liberalism uh as a young academic.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we never got to speak about Delida, but he was uh instrumental in that, and yet there is a strong conservative element to his thought.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he became a good friend, and and I realized that this was no Zelot, he was somebody who uh um really was a kind of committed uh intellectual, uh first-rate intellectual, but who's who uh saw um uh the need for culture and the need for uh inheritance, but wanted to loosen it up a little bit uh to let hidden voices uh you know come forth and and into the light.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um but he anyway, he had helped me to on that that that uh pilgrimage away from my ancestry, um never losing sight of the essentials.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: But one day I stumbled into uh this old church, which I knew very well.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yet when I walked in, I was hit with those ancestral voices that they surrounded me as if now I I literally mean they surrounded me, I don't mean figuratively.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: They literally surrounded me and they called me home, and I've been there ever since.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh hope we get to talk again and we can talk about Derrida and much else by the sounds of things.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: But we certainly didn't get through everything we we thought we would today.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's there's life in more conversation yet.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: And before I let you go, what what can people expect from you next?
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you working on anything and where can they find you uh in the dark corners of the internet if if anywhere?
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, drmarkdooley.com.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: Very simple drmarkdooley all remord.com.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um well, I'm continuing uh there's there's something coming out all the time.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that uh but uh I just said you go to the website and I'm not gonna blow my own trumpet.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can put yourself to sleep with some good articles there and other things besides.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Mark, it's been a pleasure.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: Have a very Merry Christmas and happy new year, and hope to speak to you in 2025.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course, Chan.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: God bless you.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: All the best.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.