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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
September 18, 2011
Self-servatives
The labelling of political positions is an idle and diverting hobby, and a source of pleasure, as I would judge from occasional pieces of reader mail. The modern "gliberal" (glib plus liberal) belief that we can change reality with words has spread among all political factions. From the Book of Genesis we gather that God was himself diverted by the spectacle of Adam naming the creatures.By tradition, political factions are named by their worst enemies, and over time, come to wear proudly what was first delivered with a quantity of spittle. Surely this is as it should be. Such terms as "Whig" and "Tory" emerged from the slanders of 17th-century England. (Whigs originated in the observed behaviour of Scottish covenanters, the Taliban of their age; Tories in an image of Irish highwaymen.) The arrangement of a spectrum from Left to Right is of dubious value, but then, our whole economy is based on goods of dubious value. It has been noted by the wise that this spectrum is not linear, that it bends to make a circle, and that the extremes meet at the dark antipodes - so that, for instance, between Communists and Nazis there wasn't much to choose. As I've stressed over time, nationalism and socialism both lead over the horizon to the dark side. Philosophy, which can be a form of labelling, was defined a century ago (by T.E. Hulme) as the art of drawing a convoluted, but absolutely precise line, between yourself and the people you can't stand. I gave the term "gliberal" above, which I've been earnestly trying to insinuate into political vocabulary, as a way of distinguishing classical liberals from the post-modern kind; the ones I can endure from the ones I can't. The former are the traditional defenders of individual liberty, against the mulching and homogenizing power of big business and government. The latter are what we have today: people who glibly assume that if a problem exists, the government must do something; who accept plausible explanations; on whom paradox is lost. The term is meant charitably, of course. For in turn I want to distinguish "gliberals" from what I call the "leftoids" of various persuasions. I mean, those who work actively to invent these problems: "activists," with their "progressive" agendas. The gliberal isn't into agitprop. He is merely along for the ride. Opposing the gliberals, we have what are politely called "conservatives." It is generally understood that conservatives resist any progressive agenda. It is widely believed that they require no intelligence to do this, and as the brainy John Stuart Mill once said, "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative." To which quote John Foster Dulles is reputed to have replied, many decades later, "If we'd had one more smart person at Yalta, we'd have given France and England to the Soviets, too." The purpose of today's column is to dispense with a few more of my allies. It is to convey a notion that struck me, while glancing at the Ontario provincial election campaign, and the Progressive Conservative leader, Tim Hudak. He strikes me as the milquetoast who will find a way to lose to the most cowardly, posturing, failed, and defeatable gliberal premier a conservative could ever hope to be pitted against. It strikes me that we need a division in the conservative ranks; a way to distinguish the truly brainless, and spineless, path-of-least resistance types, from the genuine defenders of Western Civ. And the term I wish to advance for this purpose, from the urban dictionary, is "self-servatives." That is, politicos who are only interested in taxes and debt, and the most superficial questions of law and order. Who, to succeed, think their task is to convince a plurality of the electorate that they will contrive to leave more money in their pockets, and perhaps put more thieves and muggers in jail. Who consciously avoid "emotional" issues. Who, if they have any private opinion on questions like abortion, or public pornography, or eugenic technology, or euthanasia, or same-sexism, or speech codes, or dangerous immigration, or the integrity of families, or religious faith and public prayer, are careful to keep it to themselves. Who talk in carefully-rehearsed sound bites. Who tweet and Facebook 20 hours a day. Who compete with gliberals in celebrating our fake diversity, and flattering as many special interests as they can. Who flaunt their own pathetic claims to multiculturehood. Who defend today, what they opposed yesterday, when it was still possible to oppose easily; and who adapt themselves to changing circumstances in the manner of the Vicar of Bray. Who can be equally at home as conservative monarchists, or conservative republicans; as conservative socialists or conservative capitalists; as conservative taxers or spenders. And who, when push comes to shove, aren't there. Who are, truly, progressive conservatives, without a reactionary bone in their bodies, or any other bone under their skins, but would wear bones in their noses if that were the fashion. Or in a word, "self-servatives." David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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