[PEN-L:10606] What is a bigot?

Sam Pawlett rsp at uniserve.com
Thu Sep 2 22:32:37 PDT 1999


Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> Horowitz is agrieved at being called bigot. I supect that he would feel very
> comfortable lunching with Alan Keyes. ergo, he is not biggoted.
>
> Most of us would use different standard, but since we rely on such shorthand
> expressions, especially in an age of dissembling, shouldn't we expect such
> differences.
>

"..while it is a long-standing principle of British law that the fomentation of hatred (and hence of racial hatred) is a serious criminal offence, it is not clear that illiberal semtiments have to be forms of hatred, nor that they should be treated in the high-handed way that is calculated to make them become so. On the contrary, they are sentiments which seem to arise inevitably from social consciouness: they involve natural prejudice, and a desire for the company of one's own kind. That is hardly sufficient ground to condemn them as 'racist', or to invoke against them those frivolous fulminations which have been aptly described as 'death camp chic'."

Thus Roger Scruton. *The Meaning of Conservatism* p68

"Are we to take our example from the cruel and emphatic law of Islam, and institute flogging and maiming as the expression of civil virtue?...the answer cannot be abstractly determined." ibid p111

"Even democracy--which corresponds neither to the natural nor to the supernatural yearnings of the normal citizen--can be discarded without detriment to the civil well-being as the conservative conceives it."

Thus Roger Scruton.

"The state's relation to the citizen is not, and cannot be, contractual...The state has the authority, the responsibilty, and the despotism of parenthood"

Thus Roger Scruton.



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