theganso

In terms of when new political ideals were not only starting to be implemented in the post medieval age, (most notably during the enlightenment age) groups such as the Free Masons started to propose radical new ideals of this idea of a benign political order.  Up until this age the separation of church and state was virtually non-existent until democratic revolutions started to arise due to these political discussions that were  only in there preliminary stages.   Another central idea to Scruton's arguement lies in this idea of citizenship within a political democratic order.   "Citizens enjoy rights-- both the human rights or natural rights that are the pre-condition of their consent to be governed, and the right of participation in the political process."  The biggest test to a democracies convincing the  "citizens" that there lives will  be subject to "massive intereference from people whom we do not know" and  the main reason for this is that we all believe and recognize a common obedience.  However, traditional Muslim Arab societies are overburdened to obligations whether it be there family or secular tribe that constantly overlap in which case only the divine law works.  If you take this concept to contemporary times, the issue of nation-building that has seemed to dominate our foreign policy despite promises throughout Bush's campaign of a humble foreign policy.  But the Project for a New American Century got just what they wanted and the village idiot and Cheney were up to the challenge.  Anyway, bottom line is that attempting to instill democracies in countires like Afganistan and Iraq are doomed to fail, especially when you compound that with assisting them only for a few years of democracy after centuries of divine rule.  That being said, nationhood is the best we can do in Muslim Arab states because it combines this idea of pre-political loyalty with territorial jurisdiction and individual citizenship.  To advance the plot, the author is just continuing the historical background on fundamental government but insighting different political themes that in the end relate to both democracies and theocratic divine governments.  Again, since this a non-fiction book realism is repeatedly used throughout the book to incorporate fact as well as educational hypothesies.

I agree with Sam in that Roger Scruton does take the preface and the beginning of the 1st chapter to discuss the fundamental differences between "The West", or the United States and "The Rest", or mainly countries near the Arabian Peninsula.  It also explains how the west has evolved from an almost tribunal society held together mostly via religion to a society, or membership as Scruton likes to call it to an overlying government.  Throughout the years of American History it has also evolved from a state very involved in its decisions like the democratic city-states of Ancient Greece to a stage like current days where the members of society expect and trust their leaders to follow the policies they ran on and in this sense gives current politics an almost laisez-faire attitude.  However, Scruton also discusses and compares these ideas with Islam.  In states where Islam is the main and overlying the religion, the Koran (their holy book) is considered the law and government which doesn’t allow for a democracy which again relies on no outside influence, mainly religion.  By allowing a religion to dominate a country, it allows for many tribunal sectors because of a difference in views especially in religion which in turn doesn’t allow for a whole country to succeed as a government as a whole, or one unit.  "Put very briefly, the difference between the West and the Rest is that western societies are governed by politics; the rest are ruled by power."