America the Dutiful - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 63

they can potter about as they please. They are not so much individualist as idiosyncratic.
Their resentment of those in charge is less politically militant than passive-aggressive. It
is part of the “free-born Englishman” syndrome, which is less strident and self-conscious
than the “free American” complex.
The British want to be allowed to pursue their own quirky way of life with as little inter-
ference from others as possible. This differs from American libertarianism, with its fear that
a sinisterly autocratic state will rob citizens of their initiative and autonomy. On this view,
the British National Health Service is a place where you describe your medical symptoms
to a robot cunningly disguised as a physician, which then relays them to an underground
bunker in Whitehall where a computer the size of an aircraft carrier decides whether you
should be treated or painlessly put down. Cancer patients might find that the funds for their
treatment are suddenly withdrawn in order to fund the repair of potholes on the M6 motor-
way.
It is not the state that the British object to, but other people. Not long ago, the most
popular sport in the United Kingdom was not soccer but fishing. Fishing is a fine excuse
for avoiding other people. The same is true of the collegiate system at Oxford and Cam-
bridge. Because everyday life in these universities is organised on a collegiate rather than
departmental basis, you do not have to encounter other people in your own academic sub-
ject from one year's end to another. This is one of the great advantages of having a job in
these places, and ought to be emphasised in their advertising. Since the person sitting next
to you at college lunch is likely to be in a subject you have never heard of, let alone know
anything about, there is no tedious necessity to talk to them. This greatly enhances the qual-
ity of intellectual life, as with those marriages in which one partner lives in San Diego and
the other in Hong Kong. The durability of such relationships tends to restore one's faith in
wedlock.
Over the centuries, the British have perfected all kinds of ingenious methods for avoid-
ing each other. Americans, by contrast, are a gregarious crowd, endlessly clubbable. The
country is stuffed with guilds, fraternities, sororities, learned societies and professional
associations, along with conferences, seminars, conventions, summer institutes and other
such anthropological rituals, all of which are taken with immense seriousness. One of
the largest of such bashes is the annual convention of the Modern Language Association,
where it is possible to be in hotels with thousands of other people all of whom could tell
you the name of Hamlet's mother. People in Britain attend such gatherings less frequently
and eagerly, and do so largely in order to drink. They are shy creatures, not easily taken
into captivity. Life is so arranged as to avoid as far as possible those unfortunate collisions
known as meeting other people.
The British, then, are out to protect their divine right to be eccentric, not to voice some
aggressively libertarian doctrine. They are quite willing to accept authority provided it does
not disrupt their way of life. When it does, they become bloody-minded, which is not a