It’s Still Rock’n’Roll To Me

I have finally – five months late, and at least three and a half months since I sincerely thought I was nearly finished – completed the draft of a chapter on ‘Conservatism and the Classical’. The delay is partly due to the usual problems of lack of energy, lack of sleep, ongoing fatigue and chronic self-doubt, and partly due to the impact of my father’s illness and death, but I am also inclined to blame the subject matter. ‘Conservatism’ is at best vague and shifty – deliberately so, most of the time, making lack of specificity into a virtue on the basis that only pointy-headed Marxists believe in theoretical frameworks rather than just good old common sense (cue Oakeshott talking about it as disposition rather than doctrine). So, one has to construct it oneself, more or less charitably, in order to have anything to discuss, knowing full well that conservatives will merrily dismiss any such construction as being far too coherent to be real conservatism. Further, this is really not a…