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Slipping On The Peel Of “Liberal Conservatism”

By contrast, David Cameron is representative of a genuine and profound change within the Conservative Party. With a few exceptions, my generation – who were born in the 1960s and attained political consciousness in the 1980s – have always combined liberal and conservative views. To put it simply: we are liberal on the whole gamut […]

By contrast, David Cameron is representative of a genuine and profound change within the Conservative Party. With a few exceptions, my generation – who were born in the 1960s and attained political consciousness in the 1980s – have always combined liberal and conservative views. To put it simply: we are liberal on the whole gamut of social issues because some of our best friends are gay, but we do want conservative economic policies because we know free markets work. ~Niall Ferguson, The Daily Telegraph

So having gay friends obliges a Tory to become incoherent and drippy on moral and social questions?  This is distinctly odd, as if you couldn’t have certain types of friends without buying into specific political programs or positions associated with their political, ethnic or “sexual orientation” lobby.  I have several green and left-liberal friends; I do not therefore feel the need to embrace the Kyoto Treaty.  Why one would feel obliged to embrace the absurdity of “civil partnerships” or gay “marriage” because you know nice homosexuals whom you have befriended genuinely escapes me.  I have met many nice Turks, but that doesn’t make me an enthusiast for Turkey entering the EU; I have met some very decent Muslims, but that does not make me think any better of Islam.  It is is precisely this kind of “I have a gay friend, so I will support something that might otherwise seem absurd or wrong to me” thinking that expresses the stunning superficiality and incoherence of the conservatism of the “fiscally conservative but socially liberal.”  Its motto might as well be, “Show me the money–which I am about to reinvest in a market-oriented ’empowerment zone’ for the underprivileged!”  Hug a hoodie, indeed.     

But it gets worse.  Sir Robert Peel–no hero to agrarians or all that many Tories thereafter–is now the model to follow?  Conservative economics consists of…adopting old liberal economics?  To be blunt, what is left of conservatism in this hodgepodge?  What can it say for Dave Cameron that Mr. Ferguson cites the likes of Schwarzenegger and Mayor Bloomberg (who was simply a liberal and a Democrat not that long ago) as his American counterparts?  I suppose all of them together form a trend, but a trend towards what exactly?  Vacuous rhetoric and the abandonment of many traditional policy positions associated with their respective parties?

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