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adarede · 2 years ago

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Some excellent Scruton epithets from the London Review of Books:

[ID: The only really stupid critique of Isaiah Berlin that I have ever read was by that recreational vulpicide, Roger Scruton, who accused him of being soft on Communism.]

And Scruton’s response to the above:

[ID: 10 December 1998. Christopher Hitchens, reviewing Michael Ignatieff’s study of Sir Isaiah Berlin (LRB, 26 November), claims that I accused Sir Isaiah of being soft on Communism. This is not true. In the piece to which Hitchens refers (the only article I have ever written about Berlin), I praised Berlin for his hostility to Communism. But I criticised him for being soft on Communists and their fellow-travellers. Like many liberals, Berlin pursued a policy of pas d’ennemi à gauche. The wisdom of this policy, in a man not naturally given to feats of courage, is amply displayed by Hitchens’s review: a collage of mischievous gossip, innuendo and self-righteous contempt, the only ground for which is the support Berlin offered to those who were prepared to defend liberal democracy against revolutionary Communism. Were history called on to judge, would Berlin’s name come higher or lower than that of Hitchens, I wonder, on the list of those who have sided with political crime? Signed Roger Scruton, Brinkworth, Wiltshire.]

To which he receives the following reply:

[ID: 21 January 1999. Roger Scruton, a remote and ineffectual don, takes up his quavering, corroded pen (Letters, 10 December 1998): ‘Were history called on to judge,’ he asks, ‘would [Isaiah] Berlin’s name come higher or lower than that of [Christopher] Hitchens, I wonder, on the list of those who have sided with political crime?’ Can Scruton cite a single political crime with which Hitchens has ‘sided’? If not, would he care to apologise for this libel – and, in future, to consign his malodorous ruminations to their proper place in his Wiltshire cesspit? Signed Francis Wheen, Pleshey, Essex.]

Correspondence continues here:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n23/christopher-hitchens/moderation-or-death

#roger scruton #recreational vulpicide #and his malodorous ruminations #op

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