Gerard Henderson, another history lesson, and conservatives can never be Liberal ...

(Above: Bugs Bunny as Uncle Joe. Ah the good old days when we were friends with a sociopathic Communist - let's use the term loosely - dictator).

Every so often, we get quite metaphysical at the pond.

Reading the commentariat on a regular basis, it's remarkable how many are in a constant state of crisis, irritation, anger, concern, denial, suffering or rage.

Each day we could just use a header "Angry scribblers", with name appended, as the commentariat act like antimacassar radio shock jocks, even if inclined to put on a more genteel public display of dismay.

And of course where does that leave the pond, but in an über, meta level of commenting on commentariat commentators, and so in a constant state of uproar, upflap and congealed dismay and irritation.

Which is why you have to laugh, especially when Gerard Henderson, he of inestimable dullness and torpor, sets off to follow sundry hares under the header Angry old leaders - Libs lots, Labor 1.

In the good old days - back when they used to know how to do the crispy bacon we had before the war - we used to run a book on Henderson and his ability to mention John Howard, and today's effort drags in Howard some six times. Talk about short odds.

But then it's hardly surprising, because Henderson loves to trot or canter or sometimes gallop through the by ways of history, and in this turn around the track, he manages to mention Robert Gordon Menzies some ten times, in a bid to prove that the Liberal party has been illiberal throughout its history. Conservative yes, but Liberal never.

What sirrah nevah? No never ever nevah!

Yep folks, there's never been a more determined effort to remove the wets from the ranks of the Liberals and affirm that everybody is a kind of desiccated dry coconut, like Hendo himself.

This is illiberal conservative, Henderson come Menzies come Howard style, as a way of proving that Malcolm Fraser himself is now just a hopeless embittered angry old leader. Like so many old angry liberals who discover Liberal can never mean liberal ...

For Henderson to person this imaginary Maginot line of the liberal spirit requires a constant tending, revision and re-writing of history to ensure that the record is so and thus, and thereby proves the Henderson point admirably. Here's the nub of it:

What's important about Fraser's present stance is not his personal hostility to Howard but rather his attempt to define what should be the core of Liberal Party philosophy. Fraser claims he is in the tradition of its founder Menzies, which he defines as liberal while the likes of Howard and Tony Abbott are not. To Fraser, Howard and Abbott are conservatives.

Of course what's important about Fraser's present stance is his personal hostility to Howard and to Abbott. You can tread on many ghosts in Henderson's presence, but you can't tread on his fawning hero worship of John Howard.

As a result, Henderson spends the rest of his column explaining and confirming the notion that Menzies was definitively a conservative rather than a liberal. He can't even abide the thought that Menzies might have had certain liberal tendencies, along with a conservative streak, perhaps relating to Menzies worshipping at the feet of the sometimes liberal English. No schizophrenia is allowed in the Liberal party.

No, Menzies was a died in the wool conservative, dedicated to kicking the commie can, with his attempts to ban the Communist party and join in various crusades against Communist countries, including the introduction of conscription. These were not the actions of a small l liberal, Henderson trumpets, in a QED gotcha.

Of course this puts anyone wanting an argument in the absurd position of defending Ming the merciless as a small l liberal. But what Henderson's simple minded reading of history ignores is that Menzies was above all an astute politician, and kicking the commie can during the nineteen fifties was par for the course (so much so that the ALP fractured into the Catholic driven spin off party the DLP).

There's a good argument that Menzies in 1951 introduced his legislation to ban the Communist party in the hope that the vexing ALP-controlled Senate would reject it, and give him an excuse for a double dissolution election. Instead Labor let the bill pass, and it was left to the High Court to rule it unconstitutional. Menzies used the rejection of a banking bill to call a double dissolution, and won control of both houses in the consequent election. It was only then that Menzies sought to maintain the rage by bringing on the referendum to ban the party, which was narrowly defeated.

Nonetheless, Menzies' activities in relation to the Communist party should be understood in the context of the politics of the times, and in his ability to weaken the Labor party, by blurring the line between the socialists, the trade unionists and the Commies, and with the DLP split, he achieved the mechanism to keep the fatally wounded ALP out of power for many years (not to mention the way that the Petrov crisis helped Menzies squeak through in 1954).

To pretend all these events were matters of principle, instead of pragmatic politics, requires the kind of delusional reverse telescope view of history in which Henderson specialises. Without nuance, subtlety or perspective.

It also involves a remarkable capacity for distortion. Take this little outing:

Last week, Fraser told Tingle the Liberal Party's present advertisement depicting asylum seekers descending on Australia reminded him of the "red menace" advertisements of the late 1950s and 1960s. Fraser claimed this advertisement was "a throwback to a racist past, and not just for the Liberal Party but for Australia".

This comment overlooked the fact Menzies was the Liberal leader when China was depicted as a threat. Moreover, there was nothing "racist" about the concern held by Menzies and others at the time (including Fraser) about China. In the 1950s and 1960s the Coalition committed the ADF to fight alongside Asians (Koreans, Malays and Vietnamese) against other Asians (who were aligned with communist forces).

Say what? Of all the delusions that Henderson cultivates, the delusion that Australia in the nineteen fifties didn't have a racist streak is surely the most offensive. And it wasn't just Menzies or the Liberals. Arthur 'two wongs don't make a white' Calwell was as fine a bigot as any could muster in the land.

It was of course only in 1961 that The Bulletin lost its infamous masthead which read Australia for the white man, an operation performed by Donald Horne, caught here remembering the moment:

... not only did I take off its masthead, 'Australia for the White Man', but within about four or five weeks I think I just changed the magazine altogether. Rather risky because all of it's existing eighty-seven-year old racist readers might have stopped buying it without anybody else subscribing, and also the entire staff went. There were two or three of them. One. No two - I would have liked to have kept. The others had to go, partly because some of them were racists, but mainly because they'd been in captivity for so long, that they were so used to whingeing, so used to saying, 'Why can't we do this, that and the other', then we arrived and we said, 'What would you like to do?' and, of course, you know, they just wanted to go on whingeing.

But back to the whingeing of Henderson.

The notion that Australia's participation in the Korean war or the Malayan crisis or the Vietnam war didn't have a whiff of colonial white man's burden or Asian dominoes toppling so that the white man's refuge in Asia might be under threat from Asian fiends as fanatical as the Japanese, has running through it a whiff of incredible quaintness, part of Henderson's ongoing campaign to excuse Australia of its racist past.

Menzies' inclination to military adventurism was as much part of his pro-British monarchical loyalty (in the case of Malaya) as his anti-communist desire to stay in the American camp and ensure that the threat from the north could always be countered by a powerful ally, as managed when we defeated the Japanese yellow peril from the north in world war II. (in the case of Korea and Vietnam).

It hadn't taken long for Australia to forget that the Chinese had been allies in world war II, and the anxiety that the yellow hordes would sweep down and set the dominoes toppling was a faithful saw in post-war politics. It's hard to remember the tone of the times, but it does remind me why my uncle refused to buy any Asian products during his lifetime, preferring a dud Holden to a tinny Toyota anytime. So long ago!

Of course meandering through the past is no substitute for attempting a genuine understanding of the times and the forces at work, but for that you'd be better off reading some decent history, rather than Henderson grinding his ideological axe and in turn the pond grinding Henderson for his incessant teeth wearing grinding habits.

Henderson really only wants to build to this capper:

In The Sun-Herald at the weekend, Peter FitzSimons related how, at the Byron Bay Writers Festival some years ago, Fraser was "warmly and very loudly applauded" for his criticisms of Howard by a "crowd of literary lefties … who all once eviscerated him as the embodiment of all that was evil".

That is a reminder Fraser gets a run these days primarily because he has become a hero of the left. That's all very well. But it is not the Liberal Party constituency - not now and not in Menzies' day.

Um, so where does this leave Malcolm Turnbull? Well it would seem that he's not a Liberal, perhaps because he's a liberal. He certainly doesn't have a Liberal party constituency, and it seems he's lodged outside the narrow John Howard umbrella of Liberalism, never mind that Howard gave him a quick early leg up as a counterpoint to Peter Costello:

Malcolm Turnbull's implied criticism on Sunday of Tony Abbott's policy on asylum seekers was not surprising. It's unclear what role Turnbull will play now he has decided to remain in federal politics, but quite a few Liberal leaders have made a post-political career out of publicly criticising the party they once led.

You see, Malcolm Turnbull is just like Malcolm Fraser. The two bloody Malcolms. What kind of sitcom is that? Heroes of the left, loved by people outside the Liberal party constituency.

Which of course leaves you to explain how Malcolm Turnbull is currently a member of the Liberal party of Australia, having appealed to his liberal constituency for enough votes to trot off to Canberra ...

The mystery is simply beyond us here at the pond, a bit like transubstantiation.

I guess when you're the preserver of the holy grail of Howardism, and a narrow 'conservative' ideology which traduces reasoned alternatives to Tony Abbott's scattergun policies, then any other perspective on life must seem to be light dimly flickering through a glass darkly.

Happily on a good day the Liberal party can be a bigger and a broader church than dreamed of by Howard, or Henderson ... and they need that broader church, if like Menzies, they intend to command the majority of Australian votes, as swinging voters cluster in the centre and avoid talk of war mongering adventurism as a natural way of life for a conservative Australian politician ...

(Below: and since with Henderson we're always involved in a cartoon version of history, here's a few cartoons. The first is a famous one by Scofield in The Bulletin in 1950, the second, 'nearer, clearer, deadlier' by the always reliably paranoid Norman Lindsay in The Bulletin in 1950, the third by Norman Hethington 'Heth' in The Bulletin in 1950 showing Robert Menzies as the quartermaster handing over all Australia's supplies to the United States for the Korean war, and the fourth from the Catholic News-Weekly 21st July 1954 showing communism eating up poor bunnies in much the same way as the Chinese restaurant across the road from us in the old days was reputed to make off with stray cats).