Scruton scrutinized

Reform conservatism?

Per Jeff Spross,

He criticizes the “frontier” individualist strain in much right-wing thinking, pointing out that “the human individual is a social construct,” that individual freedom emerges out of our relations to others, and that government is a natural emergent property of this impulse “to hold each other to account for what we do.”

So much BS, so little time.

 “the human individual is a social construct,”

No, it's not.

individual freedom emerges out of our relations to others

As does slavery, serfdom, etc. Talk about cherry-picking.

government is a natural emergent property of this impulse “to hold each other to account for what we do.”

No, it is a natural result of the coercion, struggle, and violence typical of human sociability.

Don't let's moralize it or pretty it up.

He reports Scruton writes,

On the liberal view, therefore, government is the art of seizing and then redistributing the good things to which all citizens have a claim. . . .

Maybe not "is." Perhaps "ought to be."

On this view government is not the expression of a preexisting social order shaped by our free agreements and our natural disposition to hold our neighbor to account.

So far as I know, RS is the first to express so succinct a libertarianism.

But it is true liberals are not libertarians.

As to his straw liberal view, well, who can say.

It is the creator and manager of a social order framed according to its ruling doctrine of fairness and imposed on the people by a series of top-down decrees.

All government is "imposed on the people by a series of top-down decrees."

It is force backed by baloney, be it religious or moral, except when it is raw force not pretending to be backed by either.

Wherever this liberal conception prevails, government increases its power, while losing its inner authority.

Straw.

It becomes the “market-state” of Philip Bobbitt, which offers a deal to its citizens in return for their taxes, and demands no loyalty or obedience beyond a respect for the agreed terms of the deal.

Actually, that sounds more like the libertarian view of what government ought to be, and nobody's view of what it is.