In America it appears that while you frequently tend to play the same tunes, and even sing the same songs often enough, if you are "liberal" you tend to get classified as Folk, and if you are not you tend to get classified as soe kind of Country.

Yes indeed cllr - any traditional musician has to be musically conservative, ie prefer old ways to new ways. (As we keep the old music alive.) And for folkies that tends to apply to clothes and so forth - blokes with brown boots and waistcoats and beards, drinking beer brewed and served in the old way. Women looking like they'd stepped out of Thomas Hardy or the Old West.

And it even applies to politics, but in a paradoxical way. The Tories are detested for the ruthless changes they have imposed on us. New Labour is despised for abandoning the struggle against the modern capitalist system. We're a lot more likely to sing that resolutely old-fashioned anthem The Red Flag than any modern jingle cooked up by the spin doctors.

Meanwhile in America the antics and words of Bush (yes, and Clinton too) are judged against the standards of Jefferson and Lincoln and the two Roosevelts, and found singularly uninspiring.

Back to the Future.