Roger Scruton is perhaps the most prominent conservative intellectual in the United Kingdom and since his groundbreaking study “A Defense of Conservatism” was published 25 years ago, his influence has grown in the United States as well. A philosopher by training, Mr. Scruton has written widely on topics ranging from a defense of fox hunting to aesthetics to sex; more recently, he has written a provocative defense of Western culture against Islamic fundamentalism. [...]

Mr. Scruton parts company with many American conservatives in his rejection of individual freedom as an end in itself in the social order. Rather, freedom is a consequence of the society in which it occurs, and therefore it can be limited and shaped. Nor is he a strong devotee of free market capitalism. Having traveled much in communist Eastern Europe, and having seen the destruction of so much tradition in Britain by central planning, he is no fan of socialism. But he knows that beauty is not produced solely through the free market. The free market can be understood only through the organic growth of the society around it, which itself rests upon non-market values.

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