I dunno about that, Ramesh. The USA has thrown up its fair share of (to use

the appropriate Thatcherism) “wet” conservatives; you can fill in the names

yourself. And the “weird, hysterical” strain is evident as much on the Left

as the Right. When a well-educated young woman tells me, as one actually

did, that she could never vote Republican because “Republicans want to force

me to have babies,” I know I’m in America. On the moral issues that stir

such passions in the USA, neither Churchill nor Mrs. Thatcher had much to

say — though I grant you that the opposition of both to Soviet communism

was morally grounded, not mere Great Game statecraft.