Good grief. What happened? I go away for a few days to the Gomorrahs of London, Stockholm and Amsterdam, and return to find inhabitants of this usually happy Corner burning the Union Jack, exchanging blows over British conservatism and arguing over who is the more hysterical, the Brits or the Yanks. So here goes…

On British and American conservatism: there are two key distinctions to be made. The first is the most important. Basically, American conservatism grew up in response to the failure of the American right to organize an effective response to the FDR years. It developed a specific ideology, which defined itself as much against its fellow travelers on the right as it did to the enemy on the left. Like any ideology, it comes with ideologues, and ideologues are always uncomfortable with dissent.

Contemporary British Conservatism, by contrast, was far less of a conscious creation. It evolved in response to the seemingly unstoppable rise of the Labour Party in the UK and grew to encompass just about anyone (with the exception of that collection of freaks and misfits better known as the Liberal Party) who rejected Socialism. It was a broad church. It had to be. Broad churches have little room for narrow ideologies. Add to that, the native British distrust of ideological rigor and idle philosophical speculation, and you are bound to get a far fuzzier ‘conservatism’ than its equivalent in the US.

And then there’s religion. Much of the intensity of the US conservative response to the tragedy of Terri Schiavo (and other matters) can only be understood as a reflection of the way in which much of American conservatism is intertwined with a strong sense of religious faith. This intertwining was in part deliberate (American conservatism was also a response to the perceived failings of the increasingly secular nature of mid-century America) and, of course, was also a reflection of the fact that America always has been a profoundly religious country.

The Brits, by contrast, have long been more secular than their cousins across the Atlantic, and have a tradition of suspicion of those who are too enthusiastic in professing their religious belief (Blair’s open religiosity undoubtedly costs him votes). There are any number of reasons for this, but a good place to start would the country’s experience during the 1640s civil war and its aftermath, but now is not the time to go into that. Suffice it to say that British conservatives are thus less interested in the specific teachings of the church than the role that it can play a maintaining a reasonably decent, adequately functioning, tolerably orderly society. Actual ‘belief’ was not, and is not, required of Conservatives. Winston Churchill explained that he was not a “pillar” of the Church of England, but a “buttress”: he supported it from outside. That seems to me to be an entirely sensible point of view.

Finally, hysteria. Traditionally, I would have said that the Brits did put more emphasis on restraint, moderation and that most maligned of virtues, emotional repression than did the Yanks, but then Princess Diana died…