Stumbled across this quote on Tumblr:

Social traditions, Burke pointed out, are forms of knowledge. They contain the residues of many trials and errors, and the inherited solutions to problems that we all encounter... Social traditions exist because they enable a society to reproduce itself. Destroy them heedlessly and you remove the guarantee offered by one generation to the next. In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing *answers* that have been discovered to enduring *questions*. These answers are tacit, shared, embodied in social practices and inarticulate expectations. Those who adopt them are not necessarily able to explain them Roger Scruton (1949-2020) English Conservative philosopher

Scruton was right that Institutions and practices can encode accumulated social wisdom that no single mind fully grasps - and not all inherited practice is mere superstition or oppression. Sometimes, tradition is an old thing that works.

The core argument Scruton makes here, though, is that social traditions are "inherited solutions to problems that we all encounter" and that they exist because they "enable a society to reproduce itself".

This is nostalgic nonsense.

Scruton’s argument is built on structural functionalism - the idea that because a practice exists and society has survived, the practice must be the reason for that survival. Fans of logic will recognize this as a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy:

The sun rose after the rooster crowed - therefore the rooster is a god-tier sun-summoner!

Most traditions didn’t arise through iterative problem-solving. They arose through conquest, religious decree, historical accident, or the consolidation of elite power. If we applied Scruton’s logic to medicine, we’d still be balancing humors with leeches because "the ancestors found it worked". Sometimes the answer wasn’t "this works"; it was just "the guy with the biggest sword says we’re doing this now".

If longevity equals justification, Scruton has to defend some absolute monsters:

Foot-binding endured for 1,000 years.

Slavery persisted for millennia and remains a global shadow industry.

Caste systems are remarkably durable, keeping millions in their unchanging lower-caste place for centuries.

Female Genital Mutilation has been practiced for over two millennia and persists in dozens of countries today.

These weren’t solutions to problems; they were the problems for nearly everyone subject to them.

The survival of such traditions is explained by power and coercion, not wisdom.

The Myth of Universal Interests

This brings us to Scruton’s biggest absurdity, the false idea that everyone in a society has the same interests.

When Scruton says a tradition "enables a society to reproduce itself," he's asking us to ignore who is being reproduced and at whose expense. A tradition can be incredibly functional for the top 1% while being a grueling punishment for the bottom 99%.

The Divine Right of Kings was a fantastic inherited solution for the guy wearing the crown. It was significantly less awesome for the peasant dying of dysentery in a trench during a war of succession.

Child labor was a functional economic practice for factory owners during the Industrial Revolution...which destroyed children.

By the time Scruton was wrote this, mainstream sociology had already largely abandoned structural functionalism because it fails to account for inertia, interest-driven power, and the sheer difficulty of change.

Structural Functionalism mistakenly posits a social contract where everyone agreed to the terms.

In reality, most of humanity has been born into a society where the rules were already written on the wall in someone else’s handwriting.

It’s like being born into a 100-year-old Terms of Service agreement that you can't decline to click "accept" on.

Defending a tradition just because it's old isn't a serious philosophical argument, it's intellectual nostalgia.

It's like refusing to update your phone's OS because you've grown fond of the glitches.

Transmetropolitan #24 had the best summary of this topic I've ever seen, and it acknowledges the parts of Scruton's view that are valid:

Sometimes "tradition" is a word we use to describe old things that work. Other times, it's used as a shortcut to thinking or a way to preserve power.

We can clearly see from the fierce persecution of the children’s author J.K. Rowling who has talked about having to endure death, rape and torture threats (in addition to cancellation) over a singular political stance that contempory Left-wing political aggression is not limited to Conservatives. The idea that Conservatives are especially egregious as a group, and that this is what accounts for the militant tone that now exists on the Left is refuted by the Left’s treatment of its own compatriots who dare to deviate from even a single item of the official ideological dogma. Rowling has been villified and denounced with the exact same degree of venom as any political Conservative. There has been no mercy, and no consideration of her status as a loyal fellow Leftist (who also detests Conservatives).

In the case of the author Germaine Greer we saw that even status as an iconic founding mother of “Second Wave” Feminism cannot save one from this savage treatment for daring to disagree. Greer was blacklisted, stripped of honorary degrees, excoriated by the Liberal press, and personally targeted with violent threats just as Rowling was. This trademark political malice of the modern Left is directed toward all non trivial ideological dissent (regardless of who offers it) and it is absolutely unforgiving.

Now no sensible person believes that two counterculture Leftists like Rowling and Greer genuinely harbor hatred in their hearts for individuals with gender dysphoria. Yet what certain players in today’s political conversation are endeavoring to do is to redefine the word “hate”. “Hate” now no longer refers to a kind of attitude or motivation, it refers to an outcome: the outcome of offending certain groups. It does not matter whether this person has some other purpose for saying what they say, if it happens to offend the right parties and they are aware of the potential for that offense, they are guilty of “hate".

At the very least we should be able to agree on the following rule. If it is possible in theory for a person to adopt a particular stance without an awareness of the general existence of the group that is to be offended, the stance in question cannot be fundamentally grounded in a “hatred” toward that group. Now it is obviously possible to adopt the position that identity as a man or a woman is inborn and permanent, without an awareness of the existence of individuals with gender dysphoria (as I believe billions of human beings have in the past ). Therefore the adoption of such a stance cannot be inherently based in a hatred of that group. Contrast this with, for example, the idea of white supremacy which is impossible in principle without the concept of non-white human beings.

The fact that I may hate an idea is no evidence that an idea is hateful. Mere offense does not define hatred. And the consequences of intentionally misapplying the label “hate" are quite serious. Whenever you label a person as hateful you are making that individual into an appropriate object of hatred, from a practical standpoint. In other words, the human race typically perceives truly hateful things as justifiable objects of hatred themselves ( e.g. the Third Reich, The Klu Klux Klan etc.). Therefore to illegitimately label some party as hateful because of disagreement or offense over beliefs is simply to incite hatred against ideological dissenters. We cannot behave in this way and then wonder why the state of political discourse is as dreadful as it is.

Welcome to the Conservative Philosophy

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words, redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Conservative, a feeling she openly expressed.…

What they mean is small government for business but large government for individuals (except gun owners)but what they can't say is how small.

The next time someone with whom you are in conversation insists that small government is the right way to govern or that government is too big, ask them how big should the government be? Of course the'll answer "smaller;" these people are, for the most part non-thinkers and are just parroting the [Right's] party line (or talking point, if you will).

Don't accept this answer. Insist that they tell you HOW big (or small). If they don't know how big the government should be (or is) how can they say it's the wrong size now. In order to know if the government is too big or too small one would a) have to know precisely how big the government ought to be (with logical justification for that number, no shooting from the hip here) and b) how big the government is now. If the current size of government is larger than that "correct size" then it's too big and ought to be smaller. That is to say, ought to be shrunk until it reaches that size and no further. If the current size of government is smaller than that "correct size," then it's too small and ought to be grown until it reaches that size and no larger. Don't worry. They won't know how big. They will become confused or angry or both but won't know as that wasn't covered in the talking points memo.

One can further confuse these idiots by asking them how this "smaller government" is to be measured. In dollars or number of employees or office space square footage or acreage of land, etc. If in dollars should it be revenue, expenditures, debt, value of assets, etc. And if so why? 

Unless you're talking to someone who's an economist or works for the CBO or the Fed, they will be thoroughly confused at this point and it will be obvious, even to them, that they have no idea what they're talking about. This is the whole point; to get these morons to realize that they're clueless and are just suffering from powder burns on their lips from shooting their mouths off.