No Dylan content, but this might interest some: a column by Neil McCormick in Britain’s Telegraph that asks, “Is Bono a Conservative?” McCormick was attending the first “U2 Academic Conference” at North Carolina Central University when he caught a talk by Stephen Catanzarite, author of “U2’s Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall”.

Catanzarite made an impressive and compelling case, arguing that while “the band’s political affections seem to most often favour those agitations (and agitators) coming from the left side of the aisle … the songs of U2 betray a state of mind, a type of character, and a way of looking at the civil social order that is undeniably conservative.” He drew heavily on ideas of conservatism as defined by American political theorist, historian, and social and literary critic Russell Kirk, who championed conservatism as an “attitude…sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata.” Kirk was an admirer of Dublin born 18th Century Statesman Edmund Burke’s ‘Irish realism’, and the belief that “the principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged’. In his 1953 book, ‘The Conservative Mind’, Kirk argued that conservatism was not in itself an ideology, but a negation of ideology, believing ‘the authentic conservative strives to save what is best about a civilization’s traditions and institutions, reconciling that best with necessary reform from time to time.’ Taking this as his principle, Catanzarite argued that U2 believe in and defend an enduring moral order; adhere to custom, convention and continuity; while paying attention to Kirk’s principles of ‘variety’ and ‘imperfectability’, and ultimately understanding that ‘permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.’

[...]

… U2 were in North Carolina the next day performing a concert, and I told Bono, rather sceptically, that I had met a man who theorised that Achtung Baby was a metaphor for the fall of man (“Straight Outta Eden” was Catanzarite’s catchphrase) and had just given a lecture on ‘the conservative voice in U2’. I thought Bono might get a kick out it, but I was surprised by his response. “Both theories sound bang on,” he said. “Call the Telegraph!”

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