This question has often puzzled me. And so, I was amused while reading Christopher Hitchens's memoir, Hitch-22, when he described his father's conservative political leanings. His father was a loyal Navy man. Read the following passage from his book:
...The worst thing the Navy did to the Commander [Hitch's nickname for his dad] was to retire him against his will sometime after Suez, and then and only then to raise the promised pay and pension of those officers who would later join up. This betrayal by the Admiralty was a never-ending source of upset and rancor" the Commander would write letters to Navy ministers and members of Parliament, and he would even join an association of "on the beach" ex-officers like himself. But one day when, tiring of the plaintiveness, I told him that nothing would change until he and his comrades marched in a phalanx to Buckingham Palace and handed back their uniforms and swords and scabbards and medals, he was quite shocked. "Oh," he responded. "we couldn't think of doing that." Thus did I begin to see, or thought I began to see, how the British Conservatives kept the fierce, irrational loyalty of those whom they exploited. "He's a Tory," I was much later to hear of some dogged loyalist, "but he's got nothing to be Tory about." My thoughts immediately flew to my father, whose own devoted and brave loyalism had been estimated so cheaply by what I was then calling the ruling class...
The parallels abound across the pond among anyone other than the self-involved rich: "He's a Republican, but he's got nothing to be Republican about."
...The worst thing the Navy did to the Commander [Hitch's nickname for his dad] was to retire him against his will sometime after Suez, and then and only then to raise the promised pay and pension of those officers who would later join up. This betrayal by the Admiralty was a never-ending source of upset and rancor" the Commander would write letters to Navy ministers and members of Parliament, and he would even join an association of "on the beach" ex-officers like himself. But one day when, tiring of the plaintiveness, I told him that nothing would change until he and his comrades marched in a phalanx to Buckingham Palace and handed back their uniforms and swords and scabbards and medals, he was quite shocked. "Oh," he responded. "we couldn't think of doing that." Thus did I begin to see, or thought I began to see, how the British Conservatives kept the fierce, irrational loyalty of those whom they exploited. "He's a Tory," I was much later to hear of some dogged loyalist, "but he's got nothing to be Tory about." My thoughts immediately flew to my father, whose own devoted and brave loyalism had been estimated so cheaply by what I was then calling the ruling class...
The parallels abound across the pond among anyone other than the self-involved rich: "He's a Republican, but he's got nothing to be Republican about."
