Sir Roger Scruton is a renowned conservative philosopher, the author of scores of books, fiction and non-fiction. He visited the Washington Examiner during a trip to the United States this month, and sat down for a conversation with Editorial Director Hugo Gurdon on "Modern Conservatives."

Gurdon and Scruton had a wide reaching discussion from modern issues to what it means to be conservative on a philosophical basis. Sir Roger Scruton shared many insights from his younger years, including a look at how he went from being apolitical to a conservative:

“When I went to Cambridge, like most students of my generation I was fairly apolitical but, if questioned, likely to lean to the left. But then I went to Paris after graduating, to France, and I was in Paris during 1968 and I saw what leftism really means. You know it means the destruction of that civilization that I’d come to love and, in particular in France, which was for me and object of pilgrimage, this place of high culture and wonderful literature and this history being at the heart of everything and the beautiful architecture. All that influenced me away from any leftist position and when it came to observing the street battles between the Maoist students and the terrified policemen, I found myself on the side of the latter.”