Remora

�I have no hope that things will go right or that men will think reasonably until they have exhausted every mode of human folly�.
-- James Froude


The Salisbury Review is a hugely enjoyable enterprise. Every quarter it is filled with weepy forebodings about the future, imprecations of the present, and misty yearning towards the past. The past as scripted by Walter Scott, we believe. The quote from Froude is taken from an article about him in the Winter, 2000 issue. One gets a whiff, here, of a sort of Bertie Wooster Toryism that is relieved, marginally, by the sex appeal of Margaret Thatcher, but reverts to a pottering melancholia as instinctively as the groundhog reverts to his burrow:

"The race to which Victorian England was committing itself in his day � which I suppose is what ordinary people now refer to as the �rat race� � has provided the Labour Party and the Liberals (in all their varieties) with the opportunity to recover every item of clothing stolen from them by the Conservatives over the last 150 years. This competitive society has spawned an education system which is seen by most parents as a means of enabling their children to rise in the volatile social scheme of things. It is the very reverse of the older order which said �Like father, like son�. John Ruskin described it unforgettably in Sesame and Lilies:

But, an education �which shall keep a good coat on my son�s back; - which shall enable him to ring with confidence the visitors� bell at double-belled doors; which shall result ultimately in the establishment of a double-belled door to his own house; in a word, which shall lead to advancement in life; - this we pray for on bent knees � and this is all we pray for.�

That's the spirit! A John Coleman wrote the Froude article. An Alfred Sherman writes a paen to the S.R. as a voice crying in the wilderness, which wilderness has overtaken civilization for some time -- 200 years at least. British conservatives are so much more advanced than American ones -- while Americans pine for Victorian virtues, the Brits realize that everything was lost around 1688. Here, let's pour on some prose:

"Conservatism restored is a construct unlike natural conservatism, which in its day entailed hallowing the status quo because it was the status quo, �all that is is right.� By 1982, very little of that was left. The Labour victory of 1945 had changed not only the face of Britain but also the Conservative Party. It had become Butler's party in all but name, a variant of socialism.
...
In 1982, when the Review was founded, was a time of hope, Margaret Thatcher reigned with bold Conservative rhetoric. But decades of disappointment continued to follow. During the following twenty years our awareness of the rigours, of deception grew pari passu with the oppositional stance of the Review, which has of necessity become a voice crying in the wilderness. Margaret Thatcher remains a key figure in British politics of the last quarter of the century, subject to continuous reinterpretation. That she towered above our narrow world like a colossus is beyond argument..."

Change and decay in all I see, cried one of Evelyn Waugh's characters.

In another article, the questionis posed: Is the European Union the new Soviet Union?
The answer, of course, is a resounding yes. Vladimir Bukovsky, the author of this article, is amazed at the allowance of democratic elections in such places as Poland, and the inexplicable bombing of Milosovic, a good anti-communist if there ever was one. Bukovsky's ramblings were vocalized, according to the article, in the House of Commons, where no doubt they did everybody a lot of good.

Sometimes we need a shot of the real rightwing stuff -- it is so far out that it is sort of hippie-like. This is politics of. by, and for hobbits