Scruton was what American conservative and fellow Burkean Russell Kirk might have styled a conservative of enjoyment, a person wedded to the vicissitudes of a local history come what may, with all the comforts, misfortunes, oddities and delights bound up in it, to whom it would never occur to be separated from it.
To be sure many Americans have been and still are people of such places, lovers of their new! ancestral homes, their communities, their churches and all the other institutions which over time they have come to make and make their own. This has been true especially in rural America, the bastion of Republicanism.
But this has always been in conflict with the idea and the reality of immigrant and industrial America, whose people are traitors to their birthplaces, homes and communities not just whence they came, but also here. Coincident with modernity's forces, these Americans willingly and happily move frequently for employment and new experiences, and abandon old places, old laws, old books, old boots and old friends whenever the winds of change blow strong enough in whatever direction. The great problem now is most never even bother to learn the old ways before they abandon them.
These libertarians now have the upper hand in America, making a sorry spectacle of the cause once known as conservatism. Most know nothing of what conservatism even means. Reading Scruton could teach them, but they would recoil in horror.
