Mark Steyn explains why many Tories like John Kerry: "He has the reassuring mien of an unexciting Cabinet heavyweight back when the party still had heavyweights and a Cabinet to put them in. . . superficially, he has the air of a cadaverous Douglas Hurd."
I think it's simpler than that: the Tories' conservatism is closer to our own Democratic Party. American-style conservatism exists at a party level only fitfully in most places of the world -- Western Canada or the Czech Republic, for example. Then there are those rare individuals born with a normally-recessive conservative gene, some atavistic trait of Churchillness that skips three or four generations and then appears -- Baroness Thatcher is a good example.
Speaking of Lady Thatcher, I once saw a poster of her which illustrates things nicely. She was saying, apocryphally, "In my country, as in America, there are two parties -- the Labour Party, which in your country would be the Socialist Party; and the Conservative Party, which in your country would be the Socialist Party."
Our relatively vibrant and healthy conservative movement is the chief reason that Europe and America speak past one another. They can't understand the conservative mind a whit better than the editorial board of the New York Times.
Posted by Discoshaman at mars 5, 2004 12:45 AM | TrackBack
Back when I was a student photojournalist for my university paper (1998/1999), I got to get pretty up close to Maggie when she gave an on-campus speech. Nice lady.
Posted by: Bird at mars 5, 2004 09:50 AMBaroness Thatcher and Audrey Hepburn are the only competition my wife ever had. ;)
Posted by: Discoshaman at mars 5, 2004 12:31 PMYou need to watch out for those Scotland Yard chaps.
Posted by: Bird at mars 7, 2004 02:42 AM