The Moderate Voice occasionally runs Guest Voice columns to provide a better buffet of ideas to our readers. This MUST READ column is by Robin Koerner, publisher of one of the most indispensable websites for anyone interested in how America is viewed abroad, Watching America.
The Rightness of America
By Robin Koerner
On Dec 6, a very British event offered an interesting point of comparison for the relationship between the center of the American political spectrum, and that of the rest of the developed world.
The event was the election of the new leader of Britain’s Conservative party. The Conservatives are Britain’s Republicans, and they mark the right of British politics. Their recent history is definitively characterized by the likes of Churchill and Thatcher, who was Britain’s Reagan. Thatcher, the mother of British capitalism, is remembered in England for her statement that became the tag-line of Thatcherism and a great brush-off of the Left: “There’s no such thing as society�.
The relevance of Tuesday’s election of David Cameron to lead the Conservative Party to American politics follows from three facts: British culture is closer to American culture than is that of any other developed country except Canada; both main political parties in Britain supported the recent invasion of Iraq (which fact sets Britain apart from other first-world countries), and the British economy is the most capitalistic of any of its European peers, and in that regard is closest to that of the U.S.
As Bush did five years ago, when he ran against Gore, Cameron will lead his Conservative party into the next election against a “left-of-center� party (the Labour Party, Britain’s Democrats) that has successively won the approval of the nation by embracing a “third-way�, which term has been used as much by Tony Blair as it was used by Bill Clinton.
In his acceptance speech as the new Leader of the Opposition, Cameron offered many of the comments you’d expect from a small-government conservative. Indeed, he set his direction with his own response to Thatcher: “There is such a thing as society. It’s just not the same thing as the State.�
His speech covered six main themes, which demonstrated how the British right wing could be considered to be at the center of American politics. Most of his themes were social. His first was the need to turn around Britain’s deprived urban communities. He moved onto the need for excellent, and properly funded public services.
In Cameron’s Conservative Britain, he said, “climate change and the environment wouldn’t be an afterthought�. And his audience laughed approvingly at his mention of riding a bicycle to work this morning in what was a carbon-neutral journey, until the BBC sent a helicopter to film his ride. As I listened, I tried to imagine Bush or indeed any prominent Republican trying a similar line, and having any success with it. I found that my imagination isn’t that elastic.
The war on terrorism got a mention just before the end of the speech – as the fifth theme of six. And the mention was a single sentence in a ten minute speech.
This is the British right – the right-wing of the most capitalistic developed nation in Europe.
But it was Cameron’s closing remark and emphasis that showed most clearly how Conservatism has a different meaning outside America. He said, “In this modern compassionate conservative party, everyone is invited�. And everyone knew he was including homosexuals, pro-choicers (like the speaker, a conservative pro-family pro-choicer) and even – are you sitting down? – people who don’t believe in God.
British conservatism is more like American liberalism. And the American right is purely that – the American right.
Robin Koerner is a Briton who lives in New York; he is the Publisher of www.WatchingAmerica.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.