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Johnson
Johnson on the politics of language
Jan 26th 1995
From The Economist print edition
IT WAS a silly piece, by any standard. It assimilated, for condemnation in the same breath, the moral cretinism that excuses Pol Pot and the wholly reasonable judgment that the two superpowers were equally responsible for the nuclear arms race; a judgment that one might think almost self-evident (except to those who blame a race solely on the runner that began it—in this case, indisputably, the United States, which was not quite what the author had in mind). Yet it was not this historical oddity that caught Johnson's eye. It was the words “our culture”.
To be exact, what the article said was that “our culture”—defined as our economic systems and values—“has never been under such sustained attack, from within”. As history, this isn't even odd, it is bunk, reality stood on its head. America has just voted for the low-tax, low-government Republicans. In Britain (the piece appeared in the Daily Telegraph last month), true, left is not yet right. But it was Attlee's Labour government which nationalised everything that moved, then Harold Wilson's which raised marginal tax rates to 98%. Today's Labour leader, Tony Blair, would not dream of either, nor get elected if he did.…
