Canadian Political Scientist with a great critique of cancel culture

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Scruton, as I was already aware, was skeptical of the direction in which the human-rights movement was headed. He agreed wholeheartedly with what others would call first-generation human rights—in his terms, “claims for liberty” drawn from natural law. In particular, he defended the idea of individual agency, which invited a wall of rights protecting individuals from the encroachments of state and society. He contrasted these “negative” rights with claimed rights that are associated with the pursuit of equality and social justice. What distinguishes such claimed rights, he argued, is that they depend on positive actions from state actors—often on behalf of groups instead of individuals—rather than the right to be free of state encroachments. In many cases, positive rights are effectively political demands that are expressed in the borrowed language of human rights.

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