Roger Scruton interview

An excerpt from the interview (pt. II) with the British philosopher at Right Reason:

My advice to President Bush would be to look at the ways in which the power of the state might be needed in order to support the autonomous associations and ‘little platoons’ of American civil society. There are two evils in particular which need to be addressed: the litigation explosion, which has vastly increased the risk of small businesses, and also sown discord among neighbours; and the disaster of the inner cities, which have suffered from the worst effects of American zoning laws and laissez-faire aesthetics, with the result that the middle class has fled from the city centres, causing social decay at the heart, and an unsustainable growth in transportation and suburban infrastructure all around. I believe that federal policies could be initiated that would address both these evils, without increasing the role of the state in the conduct of litigation or in the planning of city streets.

One Comment

  • The pricipal reasons why the American middle class has fled the cities (and still is) is that ever since the end of World War II it has been relentlesss government policy to persuade and subsidize city inhabitatnts to move to the suburbs, offerng low cost suburban home financing, favorable tax policy etc. as incentives. Add to that the catastrophic decline in the quality and safety of urban schools, forced school bussing, urban riots, the rise in urban crime and corresponding collapse in law enforcement(particularly in the 1970s), redevelopment (which has been a relentless mass destroyer of low and middle priced urban housing, etc. and you have a prescription for the decline of cities that won’t be reversed unless and until these disastrous policies are reversed — which at best would be a decades-long process, if we were to try, which we haven’t done.