Increasingly well-organised American conservatives are driving US policy on terror, the environment and values issues.
“How Can 59,054,087 People Be So Dumb?"
- Front page of The Daily Mirror – the day after George W Bush was re-elected.
Old European newspapers like the Daily Mirror (itself dumb enough to be duped with false photos traducing British troops serving in Iraq) just don’t understand conservative America.
The Old World has always been a bit sniffy towards the New Worlders across the pond. It has never quite understood how an American people it invariably portrays as stupid have also become the world’s most economically successful and scientifically advanced.
Sophisticated Europe and conservative America
In reality the gap between America and Europe is a gap between European social democracy and American conservatism. Europe liked Clinton despite his manifest personal failings and warmed to the prospect of a President John Kerry. Senator Kerry’s promise of an America respected in the world was political speak for ‘a neutered US won’t do anything again without UN/EU approval’. What Europeans really despise is the conservative swagger of George W Bush.
Europe is very proud of its sophistication when set against the alleged simplicities of George W Bush’s worldview. Old Europeans know that you need to summiteer with terrorists – address their concerns – tackle the root causes of their hatred of the west - not ‘hunt them down and smoke them out’. Secular Europe laughs at the way George W Bush still seems to believe what the Bible teaches about marriage and the sanctity of every life.
Old Europe, the Liberati, secular fundamentalists and most of the world are in absolute agreement that Bush and his voters are not just dumb - they are dangerous.
They are dangerous because of their refusal to appease terrorists, their opposition to the Kyoto environmental treaty and because they appear to be serious about their religious faith.
US exceptionalism (1) – terror has to be defeated and never appeased
Guilty (in the past) of sponsoring Irish Republican terror the 9/11 experience shook America into action against all sources of terror. George W Bush understood that the likes of Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were planning for 9/11 to be a mere curtain-raiser for future outrages. Armed with weapons of mass destruction they intended to commit unthinkable atrocities. Unlike Old Europe, George W Bush understood that pre-emptive action was essential for the self-defence of civilisation. Old Europe’s ostrich tendencies will, no doubt, only have been confirmed by the insurgencies that have cost so many lives in post-Saddam Iraq. Bush and Blair were nonetheless right to topple a rogue regime that could easily have financed and armed terrorist networks with devastating weapons technologies.
US exceptionalism (2) – the environment
America’s rejection of the Kyoto global warming accord has earned the wrath of the world’s environmentalists. But the idea that America is uninterested in the environment is untrue. America simply rejects the idea that economy-flattening controls are sensible. The Bush administration is putting its faith in environmental technologies such as hydrogen-powered cars.
The Copenhagen Consensus offers alternative ways of spending the $150bn cost of Kyoto. It suggests that HIV/AIDS prevention for 28 million people ($27bn) and a billion fewer annual cases of malaria ($12bn) are two better uses of that money.
US exceptionalism (3) – religion
The USA’s combination of wealth and high rates of churchgoing is probably unique. As Europe as become richer it has become more secular – leaving Africa and other spheres of revival to defend Christian orthodoxies.
Religious (largely Christian) America has three main characteristics:
- It continues to breed. Old Europe faces a demographic timebomb because of its failure to reproduce itself. Democrat-supporting blue states are also shrinking. It is only conservative red state America that is still ‘going forth and multiplying’.
- It has a different view of compassion. It rejects the feed-and-forget philosophy of the big state bureaucracies and believes that the war on poverty can only be won if character and family values are restored.
- It is pro-Israel. It is only partially true that American Jews drive the USA’s support for the Middle East’s pre-eminent democracy. Much more electorally potent are the much more numerous evangelical Christians who believe that the Bible mandates special responsibilities towards Israel.
The sources of US exceptionalism
Conservative-inspired US exceptionalism hasn’t happened overnight or by accident. It owes much to the cultivation of a conservative infrastructure of think tanks, talk radio shows and grassroots advocacy organisations. This infrastructure has nourished the army of fundraisers and voter mobilisers that have transformed a Republican Party hungry for money and get-out-the-vote activists. The Democrats face the same pressures but their hunt for cash and activists has seen them veer towards America’s MooreOn tendency.
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