In response to the overbearing social conservatism of Thatcher, Queen becomes far more political. Freddie never enters the underground scene (bathhouses, frequent unprotected sex, etc.), so he never gets HIV. In 1982, the album "Hot Space" is shelved in place of a very political album about the Falklands War.
Freddie Mercury is seen as a "spokesman of a generation". He publicly endorses the Liberals in the '83 election, leading to a resurgence in Lib popularity, despite an overwhelming Conservative victory. In 1984, the song "I Want to Break Free" is released, but rather than being a love/breakup song as in OTL, it is a left-wing anthem about oppressive conservatism controlling people's lives. At Live Aid, widely considered Queen's best performance, Mercury announces that Queen will be taking a hiatus after the band's next album is released so that he can run for parliament from the Hammersmith constituency (he resided in West Kensington at the time, within the Hammersmith constituency). In the 1987 election, Mercury wins. He is seated and quickly rises in the (admittedly small) ranks of the Liberal party. He helps to negotiate the merger with the SDP, with the rallying cry "A United Left for a United Britain". Mercury becomes vital for the Lib Dems, reaching out to young people (under 40) to run and vote in the next elections.
In 1992, a seemingly Labour lead was trounced by late-deciding young voters, who responded to criticism of Labour in The Sun and to left-wing attacks on Major's economy, especially the recession. The election resulted in a Hung Parliament ...
Just how well did we really do in Hammersmith in 1987?
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Forget, please, "conservatism." It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke” about himself and God.
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