Jeremy Stangroom

7. He correctly argues that lefty intellectuals tend to obfuscate & retreat behind slogans and sophistry when asked difficult questions. But conservatives do the same: What about slavery? What about vicious religious intolerance? What about entrenched racism?

Does Roger Scruton support slavery, religious intolerance, or racism?

No. But he absolutely explicitly defends prejudice... (But the more interesting question is whether conservatism provides the tools with which to criticize these things; and if so, whether it can coherently do so).

as for prejudice, it is perhaps just a Hume-an preference for custom, practice, sentiment, and what has worked so far. Pragmatism by another name, against the utopian rationalism and the consequences of that we have witnessed.

But that's not a defense of prejudice as prejudice. That's basically a consequentialist defence. Scruton wants to secure prejudice against rationally constructed arguments even if they're consequentialist in nature.

Where does Scruton defend prejudice regardless of consequences?

Sorry, we're at cross purposes. Scruton's point is that prejudice as prejudice isn't rational - it's not the outcome of a rational argument (consequentialist or otherwise). You've got to step outside of it, & look at it from a third-person perspective, as an anthropologist might.

Prejudice is not the outcome of rational argument, yes. It may be the result of history, custom and practice - tried & tested through time. Has benefits though not obvious, which one should not throw away lightly, just because one cannot provide a rational justification for it.