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David Hugh-Jones's avatar

I have a lot of sympathy, but you can't determine your aesthetic principles by your political needs.

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Eugine Nier's avatar

If your aesthetic principles brought you to this, of what use are they?

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Tim Almond's avatar

"It is Michael McIntrye, it is Jack Vettriano, it is a Ford F350 Super Duty, and it is Chris Janson singing country music. Above all it dismisses much of what Deano and Bubba, their wives and children find beautiful because that is a degenerated beauty."

But that's a rather narrow section of things that Deanos like. They love big action movies which are the modern equivalent of Wagner or hearing Bach at Salisbury Cathedral. They are as capable as anyone else of having a transcendental experience when watching Dune 2 or Inception at a multiplex.

The difference is that Deanos aren't wrapped up in all that establishment snobbery about what art and culture you are supposed to like. You can serve good wine or Cognac to Deanos and they appreciate it. They'll tell you how they love Barolo or Chateauneuf-du-Pape. But they aren't buying things like highly fashionable but barely drinkable "natural wine".

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Eugine Nier's avatar

> Scruton doesn’t need to define ‘beauty’ because he has said it against a dismissal of ‘kitsch’.

I've come to the conclusion that 'kitsch' is merely the term for beauty that's been made affordable to the masses.

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Eliot Wilson's avatar

Agree with the whole sentiment. There is an interesting sort of flipside, which is the insistence that politicians cannot understand the lives, views and aspirations of voters, whether Shoreditch hipsters or Deano, without being exactly the same as them in origin and background. Which would have baffled Stanley Baldwin and Clement Attlee equally, before one even thinks of Churchill.

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Simon Cooke's avatar

Very much so. I sit firmly in the classical music and cathedrals camp but I get why my neighbours have plastic grass and a garden bar! I don't think my cultural preferences should be forced on folk. Gentle persuasion maybe.

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Brettbaker's avatar

Also as Oren Cass has pointed out, a lot of leadership types don't want to do anything about restricting immigration because "what about our nanny"?

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