Feature
Keep right
by Tim Wilson
US humorist P J O'Rourke and others define conservatism at a conference in New York.
“I was and I remain in favour of the Iraq war,” says American humorist and right-wing cross-patch P J O’Rourke, “but I’m opposed to the peace.” O’Rourke, his face a rumpled suggestion of how a bloodhound might look were it hung over, peers into the chandelier-lit semi-darkness of a hall in New York’s lavish Waldorf-Astoria hotel. He is dean of the School of American Dominance and Common Sense, a position summarised in his breakthrough book, Holidays in Hell, in which he dismissed every country on Earth that wasn’t the US. O’Rourke’s latest book, Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism, plays along similar lines.
Cringing resolutely in the darkness before the gold-buttoned sleeves of the humorist’s blazer, are agreement and need. About 350 libertarians, supporters and apostles of conservatism have dispatched their Atkins-friendly lunch (carbs = bad, a sort of edible liberalism) and now they wait. They want to forget the recent loss of right-wing triumphalism in American politics. Bush’s poll ratings are down; support for the war is, to use a local idiom, cratering. Wine will not help; this is New York, where daytime drunkenness is frowned upon. What they want is to laugh.
So O’Rourke obliges, transporting them around what might be called the current situation. Are you ready?
America (a): “America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don’t think of ourselves that way. We don’t think that much at all.” America (b): “There has always been anti-American feeling in the world. The more favours we do, the more they hate us. You have kids, you know how this works.” America (c): “Americans hate foreign policy because … Americans hate foreigners, because … we are foreigners.” The Middle East: “It’s about women. How do men act when women aren’t around to give input? They act like the Arab world.”
Laughter erupts around the room like – one cannot resist observing – a Sarin gas shell in Baghdad. More is at work here than simple punning. O’Rourke is performing the conservative’s party trick – often used by middle-aged uncles – of flavouring “jokes” with self-loathing, racism and xenophobia. It’s a right-wing shtick, and revealing, for at the movement’s heart lies a belief in unspeakable truths (that poverty indicates idleness, that foreigners are more foolish than us). Its shock value can allow greater levity than liberalism.
But conservatives, like animals, arrive in different species. In the 18th century, the time of writers such as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, conservatism was a political code of preservation. Contemporary American conservatism, as two dapper Englishmen observe earlier in the day, manages to be staid, progressive and inherent.
America is conservative to her toenails – so says US editor of the Economist John Micklethwait. “The idea that the country has been hijacked by a gang from Texas is wrong … Look at Democrat candidate John Kerry. He is a secret conservative. On all the major issues, on Iraq, Israel, Kyoto [the global-warming treaty], free trade, his agenda isn’t particularly new. Conservatives control the political ideas and momentum in this country at present.” Micklethwait ought to know. With the Economist’s Washington correspondent Adrian Wooldridge, he has co-authored a book on the topic, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America.
Wooldridge, a small man with owlish glasses, details the key features of conservatism in the US. These are religious belief, power and organisation, the equating of capitalism with progress, the absence of a feudal aristocracy, a tradition of civic-mindedness, and sufficient geographical space to keep Americans out of one another’s hair. His position may be summarised with a quote that he offers, “In America, the ship of socialism ran aground on shoals of roast beef and apple pie.”
Certainly, Americans are great optimists, and self-determinists, too. A poll taken in 2002 by Ernst and Young, shortly after the stockmarket collapse and 9/11, revealed that 81 percent of American college students said they would be richer than their parents; 59 percent believed they would become millionaires. In a worldwide poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre, a US media think-tank, 65 percent of Americans told researchers that they could control circumstances on which their success depended – in short, that they made their own luck. This number was twice that of European countries such as Italy and Germany, and three times that of Pakistan, Turkey or India.
Wooldridge and Micklethwait believe that US conservatism will continue into the future. The mixture of a powerful economy, American exceptionalism, continued high defence spending and a youthful population (the median age in the US is projected to be 26 by 2050, as opposed to Europe’s 56) will reinforce current inclinations. They also offer a summary of the paradox of American conservatism: “Through individualism, you’ll promote traditional values.”
Such are the beliefs at the Waldorf. And O’Rourke is both right-wing enough and funny enough to dip into this milieu and emerge with one-liners. He continues. Terrorism: “It’s for losers. Winners don’t need to hijack an airplane. Winners have an air force.” China: “They quake when a couple of hundred Falun Gong people do tai chi exercises for Jesus.” The guffaws reach for the glittering, teardrop-shaped chandeliers, though never enough to shake them.
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