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- The Observer,
- Sunday June 10 2001
It is a quintessential story from contemporary America, unrepeatable in any other country because nowhere else breeds the anti-government ideology and culture which could persuade a man like McVeigh that the fight against 'federal tyranny' justified taking the lives of 168 innocent people. For McVeigh and his supporters are not alone. They are part of a demi-monde of militias, living all over the west and the south of the United States, training themselves, like their imagined historical counterparts who fought for independence, to resist the reach of the federal government, in particular the way it limits the use of guns and levies taxes.
It all may seem light years away from the British general election result, but the culture that bred McVeigh and the recent, calamitous course of British right-wing politics are linked by a golden thread. For the militias have the same roots in the ultra neo-conservatism that has fuelled the rise of the right wing of the Republican Party over the last 30 years, and which has had such a malign influence on the wider American and British Right.
The militias legitimise themselves by insisting that they are defenders of the canons of liberty. 'God Bless America' declares the website of one of the largest, the Montana militia (www.militiaofmontana.com) as it justifies its permanent readiness to take arms to defend American civilisation against government.
It is this same hotch-potch of ultra anti-statism and appeal to individuals to demonstrate their good character by standing against the state that underlines the philosophic credo of the intellectual hero of US neo-conservatism, Leo Strauss, the man to whom many of the advisers and some of the more influential members of George Bush's Cabinet openly acknowledge their intellectual debt. Strauss, who died in 1973, is the grandfather of the right-wing revolution. He argued that the foundation of a good society is not equality or justice, but the moral character of the individuals who constitute it. What makes government bad is that it undermines moral character. It reduces the impact of individuals having to face up to the consequences of their actions, because, ultimately, to be poor or rich reflects the individual's own worth.
The genius of the American Right has been to link this philosophy to free market economics and the principles of the American way while making an explicit appeal to America's entrenched racism. Thus, free markets are not only economically efficient, they are morally superior to any form of managed markets or social democracy because they permit the expression of individual character. To be rich is to be virtuous; to be poor is to be of poor character. To redistribute money from the rich to give to the poor is immoral, because it justifies the bad character possessed by the poor.
To argue against taxing white suburbs to provide welfare entitlements for the black inner city is not racist; it is about encouraging good character. So it is that Bush can justify his tax cuts that favour the rich while arguing that the poor need the support not of the government, but of faith-based groups and the teaching of the Bible which will improve their moral characters.
While Reagan, Newt Gingrich and now Bush have been applying the Straussian cocktail to put the Democrats on the permanent political defensive, out in the boondocks the militias were using the same philosophy to defend freedom to own guns, plan military assaults on federal installations and prevent the collapse of America. If the highbrow intellectuals in Washington could do it, so could they. The whole discourse of American politics has been savagely pulled to the Right.
Until Thursday night, Britain was drifting the same way. British Conservatives (and some in New Labour) thought the same philosophy, from limiting progressive taxation to arguing that prison works (it locks up those of bad character), could be imported wholesale into Britain, even though we have none of the same constitutional and cultural tinder that might support it.
There is no constitution that can legitimise anti-statism in the same way; there is no tradition of the frontier that lionises individualism; only a tiny minority of Britons understand the appeal of religious fundamentalism in which individual souls are redeemed by individual revelation; there is no 250-year tradition of slavery. The preconditions that have found ultra-conservatism support in America do not work here.
For Britain does not lie halfway between America and Europe. Britain is unambiguously European. We accept the legitimacy of the state; indeed, we want it to underwrite our education, health and transport systems along with our incomes when we are unlucky or grow old. We want redistribution of income to improve equality. We do not accept that riches or poverty are proof of individual worth or lack of worth. Nor is our criminal justice system organised around the same Old Testament vengefulness as America's.
This, I think, is the fundamental lesson of the general election and why, in the end, Euroscepticism and anti-statism do not work in Britain; quite simply, we are Europeans, our destiny lies there and while we may protest at the consequences, at bottom we know it. If the Conservative Party wants to reclaim the centre ground it is not just a question of being more liberal on social issues and supporting public services; it is about making its peace with Europe.
New Labour needs to recognise the profundity of what has happened as well. There are good economic reasons for joining the euro, but what clinches the case is that politically and philosophically we belong to Europe, and we cannot permit its further integration to take place without us.
Mr Blair must challenge the objections of his Chancellor and commit to a referendum this time next year. And while we recoil from what McVeigh did and the manner of his execution, we can be even more certain we will win the European argument. We are not surrogate Americans. We are Europeans.
