You have only to look at the world's conservatives to know something is badly wrong, says Philip Jones.
In the early 1900s Gilbert, of Gilbert & Sullivan fame, wrote a lyric that ran, "Ever-y-one is a little lib-er-al or a little con-serv-a-tyve". Around the same time George Bernard Shaw observed that: "It is always the Conservatives who stop behaving like gentlemen first."
Scientific studies conducted a century later have further defined the said affliction of conservatism. An American journal, Psychological Bulletin, recently published an intriguing study of a trio of figures belonging to the far right of the political spectrum: Hitler, Mussolini and Ronald Reagan.
It reported the findings of a group of distinguished psychological researchers after probing the emotional and cognitive functioning of their gang of three. They found that "conservatism emerges as a set of neuroses nourished by aggression, dogmatism and an intolerance of ambiguity".
All three shared a propensity for "moral certainty and a dislike of nuance". They were, in short, fundamentalists. They proselytised for "a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality". Read, for Australia, Pauline Hanson, John Howard and Brian Harradine.
Australians, by comparison with Americans, possess a healthy cynicism. A straw poll revealed that the odds-on favourite to succeed Peter Hollingworth as the Queen's representative was the mythical Barry Humphries creation Sir Les Patterson.
This inbuilt irreverence helps protect us from the life-destructive conservatism inherent in our political system. Well, up to a point, anyway.
The first great lie of the first great conservative prime minister of Australia, R. G. Menzies, was to designate his fledgling postwar political party, the Liberal Party. This dominant power in Australian politics was founded on a blatant obfuscation from the beginning.
The untruths of the conservative "Liberal" Party have, after five or so decades, reached their apogee with the current leader, John Howard, who has, on various occasions, misled the Australian Parliament with shameless insouciance.
The great con of the conservative parties of Australia, Britain and the United States is that of peddling the notion of "small" government. Election catchcries abound in promises to give freedom to the individual to get on with his/her life; to enjoy the fruits of a free, unfettered society.
"We'll get out of your hair and allow you to get on with your life," cry the Tories. The reality is the reverse. Peer through the smokescreen. Conservative governments go to extraordinary lengths to consolidate centralised power. The process is endemic to their authoritarian nature.
In Britain, Margaret Thatcher dissolved the statutory bodies of the Greater London Council and the Inner London Educational Association. Thus a democratic, grassroots control of the destiny of 12 million citizens was subsumed into an awesomely powerful, large, central Westminster government.
The Iron Lady enacted punitive legislation to limit the rights of gays. Her pitiless cruelty allowed Argentinians to drown after the Belgrano had sailed away defeated. She raised her eyebrows in astonishment when the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed for the souls of the enemy.
As Governor of Texas, George Bush presided over 160 prisoners on death row. The fact that (as revealed after a comprehensive statistical survey) a high proportion of these inmates were innocent, left him unmoved. His presidency was made possible by a conservative-stacked Supreme Court and by the nepotic machinations of his brother, the conservative Governor of Florida.
In Australia, John Howard has imposed arduous toil for millions of ordinary Australians by handing the poisoned chalice of tax collection to the nation's small retailers. He has strengthened the powers of ASIO to unnecessary, draconian limits, to fuel his lust for control over the prerogative of the individual. He jails the children of asylum seekers. As a prop to his political survival he fosters the anxieties of the so-called silent majority.
It is interesting to follow the media apologists for conservative dogma. Never before have they had such voice. The left is emasculated, so they aver. They despise the left. They are obsessed with its naivety, its muddle-headedness, its backwardness and its political correctness. Yet they cannot leave it alone. They worry it like a dog does a bone. Are they protesting too much? Is the Freudian unconscious tormenting them? Do they need treatment?
As an unrepentant conservative baiter, I say better the ingenuousness of the left than the cupidity of the right. I, for one, am unsurprised by the conclusions of the American shrinks. I have always known that the conservatives are sick.
Philip Jones is a Melbourne writer.
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