According to Scruton, ‘the right’ signifies ‘several connected and also conflicting ideas’ (2007: 601). These include conservative or authoritarian doctrines concerning the nature of civil society, theories of political obligation framed in terms of obedience, piety and legitimacy, reluctance to countenance too great a divorce between law and morality, cultural conservatism, respect for the hereditary principle, belief in private property, a belief in the value of the individual as against the collective, belief in free enterprise, and varying degrees of belief in human imperfectability.
