Grover Norquist, a leading voice of American conservatism, is cross about the date of the Republican Party convention. He tweets: ‘Which idiot put the GOP convention the same time as ‘Burning Man’ in Nevada? Is there time to change this?’
Burning Man, in case you didn’t know, is a festival in Nevada where ‘freethinkers’ flock in their tens of thousands to spend a few days being individual. Money is not allowed, natch. It attracts thousands of British trendies — ex-public school types, on the whole, trying too hard to carve an artsy identity for themselves. They come back considerably more smug than they left, if the ones I know are anything to go by.
How appalled they would be to know that the deeply unfashionable American Right is as fond of Burning Man as they are. Grover is a passionate defender of gun rights, an anti-tax crusader and tea party activist. He, along with many thousands of free-market libertarians who will vote for Mitt Romney in November, cherish Burning Man because of its perceived emphasis on self-reliance and freedom. If the trendies realised that, I wonder if they would stop going. Or perhaps the British burning men, those Guardian-reading residents of Dalston and London Fields, should start to embrace Steve Hilton-style conservatism 2.0 and the tea party movement.
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