I ask all this because it is important. If you laugh at these things you stand on one side of a divide. I laughed on Friday night when I saw Team America: World Police. This film, featuring a cast of marionettes, recently opened in the United States to the satisfying sound of squealing left-wingers peeved at the celluloid mockery of peaceniks. The plot has a group of gunslinging heroes saving America from cruel-eyed Islamist terrorists, North Koreans and their fifth-column of dimwit Hollywood celebs (Alec Baldwin, “the greatest actor in the world”, being the chief villain).
The divide is between those who are “South Park Republicans” and those who are not. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the men behind Team America, are responsible for the cartoon series South Park, which boasts that “due to its contents it should not be viewed by anyone”. Andrew Sullivan, the political columnist, coined the elevated term to refer to a generation of people who “believe we need a hard-ass foreign policy and are extremely sceptical of political correctness”. They are at ease with popular culture, have no itch to moralise, but want to get big government off their back. Certainly the credo of the dirty duo is simple. As Mr Stone put it: “I hate conservatives, but I really f***ing hate liberals”, and Trey Parker is a registered Libertarian.
South Park, a cartoon series about four potty-mouthed eight-year-olds, has been the most productive abbatoir of sacred cows since it was first broadcast in 1997. Its targets have included affirmative action — the only black schoolchild is called “Token”. It has satirised pro-abortion “It’s my body” fanatics — one character campaigns to abort her eight-year-old child after having an affair with Bill Clinton; he duly agrees to legalise 40th trimester abortions. And it has made fun of green activists. As one song puts it: There’s a place called the rainforest that truly sucks ass / Let’s knock it all down and get rid of it fast / You only fight these causes ’cause caring sells / All you activists can go f*** yourselves). It has also mocked sex education (remember the “Sexual Harassment Panda”?), 60s counterculture, radical disability campaigners, gay scout leaders and Barbra Streisand.
The views in the series are cartoonish but they do reflect a large strand of irreverent right-wing opinion. The kind of views that PJ O’Rourke elegantly expresses (“We are in favour of guns, drugs, fast cars, free love if our wives don’t find out, and a strong military with spiffy uniforms,” he once opined) or that Arnie Schwarzenegger represents.
Alas, “South Park Republicanism” has few champions here in Britain. But there is a growing market for it. A younger generation of Britons — overtaxed, tolerant and modern — can smell the hypocrisy of political correctness. They have grasped that PC is just a job-creation scheme — do we need yet more diversity officers, counsellors, and vision co-ordinators? They know that the welfare state’s raison d’être is to ensure that “chavs” are supplied with Burberry caps and hooded tops. But the Tories are a shower. Boris Johnson, who has some satiric South Park qualities, was forced to apologise for having unvirtuous opinions. Oliver Letwin, the weedy Shadow Chancellor, believes there is something called the “moral case for low taxation” but he appears to have left it in the luggage rack on some train going nowhere. So Britain certainly needs to import a dose of hardcore liberty-loving. Just look at some news stories from the last few days, and you will see how bedraggled the battle-standard of freedom is.
Half of all voters and virtually all pundits, according to an ICM poll, are opposed to allowing people to spend their money at casinos. Now, the only game of chance I play is eating in greasy-spoon cafés, but it’s none of my business if people want to waste their money on a spin of the wheel or on fast women or slow horses or garden gnomes.
The Government wants to make it easier to deprive defendants of their liberty by allowing juries to know of their “previous form”. Sure, I wouldn’t weep if the underclass — who, by definition are guilty of something and are the most present danger to my life, liberty and property — were corralled en masse into jail. It’s just that I don’t trust the state to do it without imprisoning me. Hence my regard for prosecuting people using nitpicky things like “evidence”.
Some fifty councils are lobbying for a bill to ban smoking in pubs, clubs and restaurants — that’s privately owned institutions. I have a right to smoke; I don’t have a right to a smoke-free environment — that’s like believing you have a right to sunny weather (although the Lib Dems will probably include that in their manifesto).
Three hundred years ago today, John Locke, that great exponent of true liberalism, died. Being a Godly chap, he would not have been a natural South Park fan, but he would have found it perplexing that Britons were so idle in the defence of their own freedoms, so keen to deny it to their fellow countrymen, so unwilling to see liberty flower in other parts of the world, and so willing to see the state devour so much of their income. But at least you are still free to ignore every word of the above.
Regeneration game
Islington council — to which I give much money with great gratitude — deserves oodles of praise. To help regenerate Old Street it is mooted that benches, customised for members of the full-time drinking community, be put in place, complete with ashtrays and a privacy-guarding low wall. The benches will lean inward to encourage a freeflowing conversation between the Special Brew aficionados. The architects behind this noble vision say that “we want them to feel good in a place that is right for them”.
Who could disagree? But I fear there is a design flaw. To service the needs of this socially-excluded group the benches simply must have can holders. I’d be willing to pay more council tax to achieve this goal.
Firing blanks
Many Americans are facing a terrible dilemma. For instance, who should a firearms enthusiast who happens to be gay support on Tuesday? Should he vote for gay-friendly Democrats who are sniffy about the Second Amendment? Or gun-friendly, gay-unfriendly Republicans?
The Pink Pistols lobby group (motto 1: Armed Gays Don’t Get Bashed; motto 2: Pick on Someone Your Own Calibre) has the solution. Vote for Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate. Alas, Mr Badnarik will prove that the Armalite and the ballot box strategy doesn’t always work.
Satanic softies
Satanists will have been cheered by a naval technician being allowed to observe his creed on board by the Ministry of Defence. But all is not well with the Church of Satan; it has turned fudgy. OK, it is still a bit nasty — its website proclaims that “Satanism, by definition, is a philosophy in which you won’t find ‘group hugs’ as part of the repertoire” — but it has gone doctrinally soft.
It says: “It is a simple matter for a member to terminate his affiliation with the Church of Satan. One simply needs to write, sign, and date a letter, stating ‘I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Satan.’ Send this letter to our Central Administrative Office and your file will be officially closed.”
In the good old hellfire and brimstone days, selling your soul to the Devil was a harder bargain to wriggle out of.
robbie.millen@thetimes.co.uk
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