Kenneth Minogue -'How Political Idealism Threatens Our Civilization'

Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the London School of Economics, Kenneth Minogue is a well known conservative political thinker. An avowed opponent of rationalism in politics, his 1985 book Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology dissects and refutes the dominant ideological strains of the first part of the 20th century - fascism and communism - whilst his earlier work The Liberal Mind discusses the characteristics and deficiencies of liberalism, in both its modern and classical variants. He is presently a director of the Centre for Policy Studies and a trustee of Civitas, and a former Chairman of the Bruges Group. Here he discusses the threat posed by political idealism to civilization as a spontaneously emergent phenomenon.