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Richard Epstein: Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Today two remarkable Englishman born during the second world war, Sir Roger Scruton died last year where we recorded the program you're about to see on the first anniversary of his death. A philosopher and man of letters. Sir Roger wrote more than 50 books including "On Human Nature" and "How to Be a Conservative." He was by unanimous opinion the most significant conservative thinker since Edmund Burke, which brings me to the Right Honorable Michael Gove, MP or Member of Parliament, a member of Britain's Conservative Party. Michael Gove has served as Education Secretary, Justice Secretary and Environment Secretary. He played a central role in the campaign for Brexit. He now serves in the cabinet of Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and as Minister for the Cabinet Office. The journalist Douglas Murray refers to Mr. Gove as far and away, our most intellectually engaged and curious senior politician. On the legacy of Sir Roger Scruton one of Britain's most influential thinkers the Right Honorable Michael Gove. One of Britain's most significant practical politicians. I'll return to that a couple of times. One aspect of being a practical politician. I am at home in California, you're in your office in White Hall and the demands on your time are ceaseless. So let me begin by thanking you for making time. First questions are quite simple and obvious. When did you first become aware of the work of Roger Scruton and when did you first meet the man himself?
Michael Gove: I first became aware of Roger's work as a school boy. I was brought up in Aberdeen in Scotland and I was a voracious reader at the time. I had a favorite bookshop, which also had a magazine store. I came across a copy of the Solsbury review on that magazine stall. I would have been about 15 or 16 and I asked my parents subsequently if I could subscribe to it, they weren't quite sure what the interest was but at least it wasn't a Playboy. So they thought we'll indulge our son. And that was the beginning reading that I remember being reminded by one of the the team there, Mary Cave, the Managing Editor that I was the only subscriber in Aberdeen. So they knew who I was, but it was a key that opened a door to a mansion with a enormous limit this number of routes. So after that, I bought the meaning of conservatism and read it again as a student. And I was, I had that sense of having been in the darkness and walking into the light. I had an incorrect sense of what my political views and instincts were but they were just that instincts and senses and intuitions. And then reading that book I realized that I was a conservative, but still in the an apprentice conservative in that there was so much more about that tradition and that way of looking at the world and that politics and that disposition, which I had to discover. So that led me on to reading more and more of Roger's own work and also to reading other thinkers that he had cited and who had influenced him. And then I first met Roger when I was a journalist working on the Times Newspaper after I left university I did various sort of journalistic jobs, but I fell on my feet when I was made a leader writer an op-ed contributor to the Times Newspaper in 1995. Roger had had a strong relationship with the Times not least of course, through the unliked indebted ship of Charles Douglas Hume. And one of the things that I read of Rogers was a collection of his Times pieces called "Untimely Tracks." And they had a beautiful quality in that they were often, you know, they often began with Chesterton style paradoxes and then made you realize the importance of, you know, of what was being argued. And it's, you know, its dramatic and powerful nature. So I got to know him then but it wasn't the first time that I'd crapped on his, on him. The first time I'd seen Roger and I saw him from a far was when I was an undergraduate a student at Oxford University. And I can't quite remember what the debate was, but one of the students denounced Roger for being a nostalgist and the reactionary because Roger had once written in favor of the Austro Hungarian Empire and then in response was nothing like that at all. Sometimes it was a completely separate issue. In response to that, Roger then explained with great elegance and weight in just two minutes why nostalgia for the Austro-Hungarian Empire was given the problems that we faced at the moment and entirely rational point of view. And what I saw that, and is what of course, everyone on this, you know, listening to our conversation knows which is that Roger was able to use wit in its proper sense intelligent humor and insight and originality to reveal truths that had been pasted over. And, you know, one of the things about Roger was that he was capable of truth-telling without ever seeking to discomfort. What you wanted to do was to draw people back or forwards to realizations about life about politics, about culture, about humanity itself. And, if you can imagine a teacher who's not didactic, a teacher who not that witches, but draws you in because of the lucidity, with which they think and you see your own feelings give an expression in a way that, you know, you never thought imaginable. You know there is a line from Alexander Pope that about art is but nature to advantage dressed what often was thought but not so well expressed. And the thing with Roger is that almost every political or aesthetic or cultural point of view from a subject point of view was never better expressed than by him.
Peter Robinson: Michael Minister Gove if I may.
Peter Robinson: Please Michael go on.
Peter Robinson: Well, we have friends in common who referred to you as Michael. So I'm thrown here, but you're a minister to me Michael. As long as you're sitting in an office in White Hall. All right. So you began subscribing to the Salzburg review as a school boy in Aberdeen. This means we now grant you your credentials as a thinking conservative, however you are a practical politician and a practical politician can do nothing without the votes you operate today in London in an environment in which wokeness is rampant. You have the press, the times has changed since you were writing leaders for the Times all the press has changed. Let's begin if we, so what I'd like to get at is this relationship of the brilliant thinker who in fact, in my judgment was quite a lot more shrewd at the practical level than it might've been supposed. But what we see of Roger Scruton is the brilliant desperation with thinking and in Michael Gove we have a practical politician Brexit, of what importance was it to you and perhaps to the now prime minister because listen as far as I could tell from here in California, watching the Brexit debate and the vote leave campaign, it was Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and not a lot of others. And among intellectuals, it was Roger Scruton. of what importance to you personally, how useful to you was it to have Roger on your side? And what difference did it make as a practical, political matter? Any at all?
Michael Gove: Yes, I think it did. I'd say, I mean, I think you're right that Roger was preeminent intellectual supporter of our leaving the European Union, but not the only I think we've heard from Professor Lord Glassman, Morris Glassman who was a distinguished, very distinguished, is a very distinguished left-wing thinker and spoke of Brexit. There were some academics on the left Richard Tock, Krispy Kitten and others who supported Brexit and indeed some on the right or not particularly strongly aligned with a particular political party. People like Professor Robert Tombs, you know one of the most peer historians of the British house who were supportive but it was a minority. You absolutely right. There was probably a soccer team of intellectuals but probably not an American football team of intellectuals who were making the case for Brexit. But one of the things about having Roger on site not just for that debate, but for others is that, if you look at Roger's career and achievement and personality in the round, you have someone who I think in any individual field that he had entered if he had limited himself to that field he would have been preeminent internationally in that field. So, you know, I don't think there's anyone who could compare as a scholar evolvement. I don't think there's anyone who could compare as a you know, a philosopher of aesthetics more broadly. I don't think there's anyone who could compare in practical terms to the contribution that he made as a single individual to keeping the flame of freedom alive beyond the iron curtain in the run-up to its collapsing in 1990. And you know, all of these things, intellectual achievement and distinction in cultural and in philosophical affairs but also practical political spadework of remarkable courage as well. Any one of those things would have meant that he was a remarkable person bringing them altogether. He was Britain's greatest living intellectual but because he was a conservative and because for so many people in, you know, in journalism and elsewhere, conservative intellectual is an oxymoron. He never, quite had the recognition that he deserved. To my mind you have people like Noam Chomsky, or Bertrand Russell or whatever who have worldwide reputations but they don't have anything like cumulative intellectual and moral weight that that Roger brought to what he was doing. But the other thing as you quite rightly pointed at is that Roger was interested in how ideas would change the world. And in that sense, he was involved with the Conservative Philosophy Group when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. He was a thoughtful and supportive friend to journalists and politicians who were making the conservative case. Groups of us often used to gather in Jessica Douglas, Rodney Leach's house in West London, essentially students all over again, as Roger teased out of us some of the weaknesses and inconsistencies in our position and drew us to a better and more rigorous understanding of the case that we needed to make. And in that sense, he was like the, you know, the not just the best sort of teacher, but someone who was making sure that we as politicians were match fit for the arguments that we needed to make out. Some of the arguments that we were making, was intellectually rigorous and as effective as possible.
Peter Robinson: Let me ask you now that Brexit is done Roger was of course intensely English. And the Anglosphere not so much as best I could ever tell the Commonwealth but the Anglosphere meant a great deal to here's a quotation from him. This dates back just a few years. "If you look around the world, those political parties "and political movements that identify themselves "as conservative, it's only in Britain, America, Australia "possibly India, that people would even use that word. "Because there's a tradition, which we have inherited "from Edmund Burke, that there is an alternative "to revolutionary change and that is not changing." All right, Brexit is done. And I congratulate you again. Do the government practical question. Do the government, have China is rising. The Germans just did a deal with the Chinese. Do the government have any notion of making more of the Anglosphere of acting on Roger Scruton's insight that there's a particular nexus of rule of law, freedom of speech, democracy that exists in the Anglosphere that really doesn't exist in anything like the same way anywhere else?
Michael Gove: In a nutshell, yes. One of the arguments that I made in the referendum is, you know, Britain, England, Scotland are European Nations of course, but we don't need to be in the European Union. And what's the real test of who a friend is? It's someone with whom you can share a secret. And we have a situation, as everyone knows, we have something called the Five Eyes in the intelligence world. So the countries you mentioned America, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand shared secrets. Our spies and our generals talk to one another in a spirit of total candor knowing that you can share a secret and that it wouldn't be spilled. Within the European Union it is not the case, That the French de JSA think that they can share their secrets with the Greek security minister for the sake of argument, nothing against France, nothing against Greece, it's just a different organization. And these ties are deep and profound and enduring. And as you say, they relate to our belief in limited government, our belief in the rule of law, our common law traditions, our political systems, it's not to say that there aren't other admirable nations with their own traditions elsewhere. And, you know, I would always say that we should always seek to be friends with those countries that are democracies and stand up for democracy in their own way from modern Germany to Israel. You know, they are our natural friends as well but there is something about that tradition but is incredibly powerful and important. And again, you know the other thing is it's not just that we share there secrets. It's also the case that we know at the first sign of danger that we would rush to support each other and that's been exhibited time and time again. Now, I think it would be a mistake to try to replicate the structures of the European Union for the nations of the Anglosphere, because by definition the European Union was a specific construct. I would argue artificial, but, you know good people can disagree which was trying to create an identity politically but not a previously existed. Whereas there's a commonality of interests between and traditions and ties between the countries of the Anglosphere that you mentioned. And I think it's also significant that you mentioned India as well, because I think that the danger sometimes is that the Anglosphere is depicted as you know, a club of the old dominions plus the US and I think it's absolutely vital to stress that these traditions, this belief in democracy, this common law way of approaching things, you know it's there certainly very powerfully in India and there's also exists in different ways and in different proportions and other countries as well.
Peter Robinson: Can I mandatory topic I'm afraid wokeness?
Michael Gove: Yes.
Peter Robinson: 90 seconds of Roger
Roger Scruton: When it came to working in Eastern Europe my main thought was that that what young people there especially needed was not merely philosophy but a whole range of knowledge, which have been excluded from the official curriculum, for instance, knowledge of history, not knowledge of literature, knowledge of the way in which those things connect, how music and art and literature feed into a vision of your society. And of course, knowledge of the religious traditions of that country. Now all those things had been excluded by the Communist Party from the national sense of identity, but it didn't ultimate view that they'd also been excluded from our societies too by the universities themselves. You know, most young people today leave a university having studied history, but not actually knowing very much about it. They will know about the periods of revolutionary struggle and other things that have appeals to their professors as part of their own self-glorification. But they won't know that the sort of things that are as it were interred within the spirit of the people
Peter Robinson: Minister and I'm conscious now that I'm speaking to a former education secretary, the curriculum of Western European, Western universities today, as hollowed out as the curriculum of the Eastern European universities under the communists one example of this term. The term didn't even exist until what 18 months ago in wide currency. But it'll do we all know what we're talking about, wokeness what is to be done?
Michael Gove: Well, it's a huge, huge challenge. And the first thing to say is that the point that Roger was making there about the vital importance of knowledge, the co-curriculum, the Canon, however you want to reinforce. It was something that I was incredibly anxious to reassert when I was education secretary, there's been--
Peter Robinson: And much, thanks that got you.
Michael Gove: Thanks from Sam, thanks from Roger. And, it is striking actually, but one of the very very best new schools state schools in the UK in London was established by an amazing and wonderful teacher called Catherine Bubble Singh who was herself, a fan of Roger and unashamed and unapologetic admirer of his work and what she sought to do in that school. And it's a school which has children from a variety of backgrounds in one of the poorest parts of London is to introduce them in Arnold's words to the best that's been fought and written. And her view was it is a perverse and ugly sort of elitism that argues that because the child may have parents who fled Kosovo 20 years ago. That that child is incapable of appreciating Shakespeare, Given, McCauley, Wagner, Mozart, Bussa, and that they needed to have everything made relevant to them because of the nature of their own experience and background. One of the things that I was absolutely convinced about is that if you look at what those who have the resources to be able to do so get for their own children it is an education which does give them access to the best that has been thought and written there. But this is, this shouldn't be exclusive. This is our shared cultural capital. This is our inheritance all of us but you're absolutely right that it's been worn away not in the sense that it's any less valuable but in the sense that the needs to transmit that sense of common culture and to give people a key to this treasure house has been, has come under attack. Now, it's not just people like me on the right, who are concerned about it. One of America's foremost, a center left thing ed Hirsch has made this point that you can't have a Bluebird sooner. You can't have a common culture in a country like the United States, unless you give people knowledge. And of course, modern neuroscience tells us as if we needed to know that it is through the accumulation of knowledge that people acquire the capacity to think critically, you know, the point is made because everything is available now on Google. You don't need knowledge. You can ask that question but you won't know how to ask the right question. You wouldn't know how to interrogate the evidence in front of you unless you have that store and stock of knowledge accumulated over the generations on which you can trade.
Peter Robinson: Can I take just one more to broaden the scope of the question a bit? The practical question. What can, I'm conscious that I'm talking to a senior member of a government that just won election with a majority of 80 seats in commons which is historic majority, still an all, you have a raid against you in the world of wokeness the universities.
Michael Gove: Yes.
Peter Robinson: The media, I was about to say Hollywood puts the entertainment. Well, Hollywood, you know what I mean? The entertainment world, all the cool people, all the educated people seem ranged. I have here, something from Roger another quotation, "In America as in Britain, "the indigenous working class has been put out of mind "and overtly disparaged by the media "and the political class. "All attempts to give voice to their anxieties "over immigration, over the impact on their lives "of globalization and the spread of liberal conceptions "of sex, marriage, and the family "have been dismissed or silenced." All right. You and I agree as does everyone watching us right now that Roger was identifying intellectual treasures. He was pointing the way to a good and rich life. And you and I both have cultures in which all the cool people have turned their back on it. What do you do as a practical politician? If at the end of your career long, may it be long delayed, but if a quarter of a century from now when you're all done with government and journalism and you look back and say we didn't make a dent in it, in this huge calcified edifice we couldn't change it. You'd not be happy with that. What's to be done?
Michael Gove: Well, that was always at the heart of Roger's thinking when he was engaging in politics. I think three things. The first thing is who is, what is the intellectual wellspring of the assault on our cultures, our traditions and so many of the the principles that would have been regarded as common sense for most of the past two millennia. The best guide to this is Roger's book, "Thinkers of the New Left" which is being re-published as: Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands." It makes the point that essentially the thinkers of the radical left recognized, but one of the reasons why their message wasn't working is that people particularly those who weren't themselves intellectual were attached to, the home, that they had feelings of affection for tradition and that these needed to be undermined. And the intellectual erosion of those feelings was the work of the deputy, does the food goes to the towns. And, that was the moose who came after them and who were influenced by them. So the first thing is, if you're going to engage in in this struggle, you need to know what is motivating and what the arguments are of those people that will just be able to take them on as Walter did brilliantly. The second thing is you make a very, very, very good point about the majority in most countries, certainly in Britain Morris Glassman made the point which I think is right, that the working class have saved this country at least twice in the last 100 years. It was the sacrifice of the second world war but also the fact that at a time when appeasement was bewitching the minds of some it was actually both within the Labor Party, but also within a section of the Conservative Party that people knew that we needed to take a different course and the amazing courage people exhibited then was, you know a courage from Ballou and that was the same with Brexit. And this brings you back to a final point which is democracy is our ally. You know, one of the points again that Morris has made and others have made is that people with the cool people that you mentioned with credit and credentials, you know with cultural inroads, they get the prime spots on TV. They're only op-ed pages at the cocktail parties where, you know you get to mingle with power brokers. There they are. But ultimately they only have one vote. And the guy in Pittsburgh or the woman in Gateshead also has one vote. And this is why, if you have the common sense of the people enabled through democracy you can have that necessary course correction. And that was one of the things about Brexit, you know, in the same way, as in any given congressional district or any given parliamentary constituency in the UK you might think this is safely red or safely blue. When we had that referendum everyone knew that their one vote counted and it didn't matter how red or blue their area was. The vote of that lady in Gateshead it was going to count just as much as the vote of Pittsburgh. And that was the way in which you had that course correction and people thought, look, I'm not going to be bamboozled by all of these arguments about the EU and I didn't need to worry, but you know people are going to think that I'm some sort of, or weak I can just see through this and I'm going to vote for you know, my country to be more accountable to me.
Peter Robinson: I have a question which is simply mandatory and it's mandatory in the sense that I've sending emails to several friends in England and every single one of them insisted. I don't mean suggested. I mean, insisted that I ask you a question. I don't want to make too much of it because I know you've been answering it but maybe not in quite this way. It is, of course, the lockdown question former Supreme court, judge Jonathan Sumption. I have the feeling I'm mispronouncing that but you know exactly who, I mean, Liberty am quoting him, "Liberty is the foundation of human happiness "and creativity, and an impressive cases needed "to justify curtailing it. "In England no such case has been made." All right. Roger would certainly have agreed with the assertion that Liberty, let me put it this way make a case for the lockdown minister of which Roger would have approved. Can it be done?
Michael Gove: I believe it can. I think the first thing to say is that Roger recognized that the single most important thing of freedom was critically important but the single most important thing is community, home, family, relationships, Tommy's obligation not imposed almost artificially, but felt naturally. And one of the things about a pandemic, any pandemic is that the actions of any of us as individuals are not restricted to our own lives. In the first instance, actually as a conservative, I would have a concern about a government that for the sake of argument, legalized heroin consumption I will object that and libertarian might say, well, you know what's the problem, but both Libertarians and Conservatives would have to concede that if by my actions, I contributed to the spread of a disease which means that the weaker and the frailer among us faces additional risk, pain, and tragedy then we should be exercising restraint. Now if that restraint is going to be imposed a second longer than is required because government hungry for power and authority clings onto it, that would be wrong. But a government that did seek to do that would soon find itself in a democracy, facing a penalty at the ballot box and being flown out of office. The measures that we're taking in the United Kingdom are supported, but supported on the basis that they're strictly there for a limited time and that they're there to help others. And in particular, the challenge that we face is that if this pandemic is not controlled then the institutions that exist to care for all of us could be overwhelmed.
Peter Robinson: Yes, Yes.
Michael Gove: Now we could have an argument about what the best way is to deliver healthcare but it's not a finite resource. Actually it's a finite resource.
Peter Robinson: It is a finite resource yeah.
Michael Gove: But it's a finite resource. And those who, again, however, healthcare is organized. Those who take the Hippocratic oath and dedicate themselves to the care of others are doing something noble. And Roger often made the point. And you would expect him as a student of Hagle to make this point that the essence of love is sacrifice. And that the essence of love of your country is a preparedness to sacrifice something for the common than the collective good. And that is what we're asking of people at the moment but ultimately the critical test is our determination to ensure that liberty returns when the needs of these exceptional moments come to an end.
Peter Robinson: Right, right. I have to say, surely I'm talking to the only elected man and all the Anglosphere who could tie in Roger Scruton and Hagle and the lockdown in a single sentence.
Michael Gove: Are they one of the person who would do so much more entertainingly than me? And that's the probably minister, but still--
Peter Robinson: What'd he do? All right, all right. Sunetra and again I'm sure I'm mispronouncing this name. Sunetra Gupta in The Daily Mail late last year, Epidemiologist at Oxford you know who she is. And she signed the Great Barrington Declaration which said "your government and our government "were going about it all wrong, shouldn't lock down. "Should focus on those who are most "at risk and let everybody else go about his or her life." All right. That's an argument I don't intend to attempt to push on you because it has very little to do with Roger but she wrote in the Daily Mail, "I expected debate but I was utterly "unprepared for the onslaught of insults, "criticism and intimidation and threats." And I read that and I thought that sounds only too close to what Roger himself went through during the new statesman scandal, when an interview, she gave an interview the new statesman journalists published excerpts of it that made him sound inflammatory and old fashioned a reaction. And it was Douglas Murray who had to get his hands on the full interview. But for a time, a period of weeks Roger was viewed as beyond the pale. He went through something like this as well, insults, intimidation. And now we have in the last 72 hours in this country the rights and wrongs of it, I'm still sorting out myself but Google and Facebook and Apple have engaged in a clearly coordinated effort to silence one aspect of public opinion. We know without being told that Roger, well, we know because he wrote about his experience during the new statesman scandal. What do the government do? I mean, you disagree you've chosen to take a different policy route from that advocated by Sunetra Gupta but surely you want to stick up for her, right to argue the point.
Michael Gove: Oh, complete completely I hope that people wouldn't take the submits but this is a very personal point. My wife, Sarah is a journalist and indeed she runs for the Daily Mail. And she disagrees with me on this central question, the biggest question in British politics at the moment. And, she takes not quite Sunetra Gupta's view, but a different view from mine and from the governments. And I think, you know moving beyond the immediately personal but we absolutely need to have this debate. You know, the only way in which government is kept honest is through critique. It might be that I'm wrong. I'll certainly seek to defend my position as robustly as I can, but we need to hear the critical voice every day. And, you know, in every field, you know at every stage of any sort of political question not as reputation, but many stages, I always, you know think of the promo code, seek yourself from the bowels of clothes to think to yourself mistaken. And you've got to be able to have that challenge. And I changed my mind on certain issues as a result of that. So I quite agree. And I also agree, that what Professor Gupta has been subject to and what Roger was certainly subject to was what I think Douglas Murray has called offense archeology. People would deliberately seek out phrases or arguments and then heedless of the context hold them up and say, Oh, how horrendous this should be so, and sometimes this power clutching was confected and exaggerated in order to try to marginalize or silence that voice. Now, my view is we're grown ups and we should try to defend what it is that we've said. And sometimes we'll speak infamous to stay. But what we should always try to do if we all grown ups is also trying to be fair to the other side in a civilized argument, understand what their point of view is. Disagree, of course, but respect. And the only way that you can emerge at a stronger position in politics or anywhere else is by paying your opponents the courtesy of trying to understand their argument and reflecting afterwards on what they have got right and you may have got wrong.
Peter Robinson: I think we have about five or six minutes. So finally one last question, but I'll begin it if I may, I asked you take 90 seconds of Roger. This is a little closer to three minutes but on the first anniversary of his death it's wonderful to be reminded of what this man sounded and looked like. There is such a thing as the permanent state, and we live in a modern world and for seven decades, at least seven decades in both your country and in throughout the Anglosphere let's, I'll grant you the Anglosphere, the state has expanded and expanded and expanded. And I love the world that you described with the same your yearning love that which I love talking but they belong on the bookshelf together. It's not a practical agenda.
Roger Scruton: Right.
Peter Robinson: Tell me why I'm wrong. And please tell me why I'm wrong.
Roger Scruton: Well, you're not entirely wrong. The expansion of the state to absorb more and more of civil society has happened everywhere, more outside the Anglosphere than inside the Anglosphere, let's face it you still have private education available here. If you wanted and can afford it you still have all the little, little cartoons as Buck called them. If you have a problem you can get together with your neighbors to solve it. You can, you know, you probably belong to all sorts of clubs and discussion groups and so on. You know all that free association, which made the English speaking countries, what they are still exists. It's just that there's attacks on it. Roughly speaking, half of what you ever you earn which goes to maintain a sort of shadow community of parasites, whose only justification is that they pretend to be governing us. You have to, you know, we belong in an organism, which goes which is accompanied by a cancerous version of itself. That's the way it is. All you can do is every now and then diminish it if, you know cut off this or that bit of it, but it will always be there. But at the same time focusing on the other thing is not nostalgia. Although nostalgia is an underrated aspect of the human condition. Remember the founding work of literature of our civilization describes a distress decision to give up in mortality and life with a goddess in order to travel across dangerous seas to his own. You know, it set the model for what we are what all our literature since has been about and all our art and why turn away from that. That is we are in this world as dispossessed and alienated and we do have that longing for a home and we try to build it. And that's all I'm advocating is that we should go on doing this. It'll always be a different home but you know it isn't any way nostalgia to say that this is where our values lie, rather than in that other thing, that great expanding state machine
Peter Robinson: Michael Gove, journalist, and elected official you have dedicated your life. I think it is fair to say you have dedicated your adult life to the ideals enunciated by Roger Scruton. A cancerous version of ourselves. Is that the best we can do? Is there any, as a matter of practical politics is there any way we can gain control over the, what did he call it? The great expanding state machine?
Michael Gove: Well, I think we do have to and it is a perennial battle. You know, one of the things that Conservatives recognize is that there are never any permanent victories or permanent defeats. And, you know, while I'm, as you will know from what I said earlier a passionate believer in democracy it is also the case that there are tendencies in democracy to ask for risk and our own lives to be reduced and the government to take more of a burden onto its shoulders. And I think there's a quick from of all people Gerald Forwards which says that if government is big enough to give you everything you need is big enough to take about a way everything that you want. And, you know, one of those points is that ultimately there is a political realm but the most important realm for all of us is not politics. The most important realm for us is culture and character. And this is something that I think Americans understand very, very well. You know, again, quote back, was it Benjamin Franklin he said, you've got a Republic if you can keep it.
Peter Robinson: Yes, yes, that's right.
Michael Gove: Yes. And the point there was you know, it's nature but still but if you want a Republic, if you want that system of limited government, then of course constructor a strong and robust constitution but what you need more than anything else is for men and women to cultivate Republican virtues to believe in the importance of the limited government to believe in the importance of open and critical and respectful debate. And you can legislate and write to your heart's content in order to limit the growth of government or to design the perfect constitution. But what you really need to do is to make sure that the character of the population overall is one that does believe in those virtues. And one of the reasons why I'm confident that whatever twists and turns our politics take governments are going to be tamed is that I think that the, you know the basic common sense, as I mentioned earlier, the majority of people is in tune with precisely the sorts of virtues and defections that Roger referred to. And you can see that again, as Roger better than anyone pointed out the cultural artifacts, the stories to which were drawn. And I knew too, that you mentioned Toki that, you know, one of the things about the Lord of the rings and a great contemporary epic, and of course written by a great Christian conservative writer, is that ultimately it's about the preservation of home and the desire to stop the encouragement of evil so that people can enjoy the hobbits and others, a peaceful and contented life to go back the here and now that's why I think that the whole question of education, not just government politics towards education, but what we value in education is so important and--
Peter Robinson: No, no, I'm just, I'm conscious. I've made all kinds of promises to people who are probably in your office. Now, just standing off camera that I'd end this by a certain time, and I've run a bit over last question, but a very, very brief one.
Roger Scruton: Yap.
Peter Robinson: The American playwright, Clare Boothe Luce used to say that no matter how great the figure history would give him one sentence Lincoln freed the slaves, Churchill saved Britain. What is history is one sentence for Sir Roger Scruton.
Roger Scruton: He saved this country
Peter Robinson: The Right Honorable Michael Gove. Thank you.
Roger Scruton: Thank you.
Peter Robinson: For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation am Peter Robinson.
