Kevin DeAnna

Imagine a dystopian England under the rule of a brutal fascistic regime. Political opposition is outlawed. Free speech is non-existent. Government spies go undercover in pubs and restaurants searching for prohibited expressions. Security cameras tape everything you do and even occasionally yell at you. The state controlled media promotes a specific political agenda and knowingly lies about facts that jeopardize its worldview. Violent thugs, funded by the state, openly attack political opponents while the regular police do nothing or arrest the victims. Those who do not believe in the official ideology of the state are either banned from decent jobs or hounded out of their profession.

Such is the world of V for Vendetta, a nightmarish fantasy designed to show how even terrorism may be justified to fight tyranny and secure freedom. The film dares to ask if violence is ever a legitimate tactic if the government crosses a certain line. It is a favorite of libertarians, including many YWC members, and tomorrow, tens of thousands will “Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November” and ponder whether they’d be willing to act if the government ever crosses that fateful Rubicon.

The problem, of course, is that this is also the United Kingdom in the world we live in right now. You don’t have free speech in England. Cameras are everywhere, and like the telescreens in 1984, they can yell at you. Police monitor what you say and do in pubs and restaurants. Saying the wrong thing can cost you your money, your job, or your freedom. The political order is safeguarded by violent thugs, supported by every major party from both the Left and the phony Right.

And the impossibility of conservatism.

It’s 1964. A stranger approaches and tells you two political movements will arise in the near future, the New Left and the New Right. One of these movements will dominate American politics for a good quarter century. Indeed, political scientists will define the entire period in terms of the ascendancy of this group; historians will write books naming this age after the movement’s most successful leader. Politicians, scholars, and activists on right and left will go so far as to call it a “Revolution.”

Imagine then that you could look at the America (such as it is) of November 5, 2008, at the end of this era.