{"id":4879,"date":"2010-10-16T17:26:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-16T17:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=4879"},"modified":"2010-10-16T17:26:52","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T17:26:52","slug":"the-uses-of-skepticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-uses-of-skepticism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Uses of Skepticism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Cowling_Maurice.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Cowling_Maurice-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Cowling_Maurice\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-4881\" \/><\/a>In a political era in which an Inquisitor DeMint can flourish, this little snippet from a recent <em>Spectator<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spectator.co.uk\/essays\/all\/6345573\/part_4\/different-class.thtml\">piece<\/a> by Toby Young was a bracing reminder of an altogether tougher-minded conservatism:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Maurice Cowling, the late right-wing historian, used to ask first-year students of his at Peterhouse [Cambridge] whether they were conservative because they believed in conservative values or because they believed in nothing. The correct answer was that they believed in nothing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A clue to what Cowling (an interesting writer, if very far from always being my cup of tea, and, incidentally, a religious man of sorts) meant by that can be gleaned from this extract from his <em>Daily Telegraph<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/obituaries\/1496943\/Maurice-Cowling.html\">obituary<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>He believed that the strength of Conservatism lay not in any particular set of principles, but in its appeal to a &#8220;combination of unashamed materialism and disbelieving scepticism about the power of political parties to give effect to Utopia&#8221;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are worse things. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a political era in which an Inquisitor DeMint can flourish, this little snippet from a recent Spectator piece by Toby Young was a bracing reminder of an altogether tougher-minded conservatism: Maurice Cowling, the late right-wing historian, used to ask &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-uses-of-skepticism\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[647],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4879"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4884,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions\/4884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}