Who is a liberal today
Melanie Phillips:
...
"...some years ago I started to change my view about the left, who confusingly often call themselves liberals. I began to realise they were not liberal at all, but profoundly illiberal. And I began to grasp that far from acting -- as they trumpeted at every opportunity -- in the interests of the poor and oppressed, just about everything they did trapped them in that condition.
"On every issue where there were true victims – education failure, family breakdown, drug abuse -- they denied the truth and substituted instead lies, ideology and propaganda. They were against western culture, external moral rules and self-discipline. They were for nihilism, the worship of the self and gross personal irresponsibility.
"And any deviation from this they labelled ‘right-wing’. Emptied of meaning, this has become a catch-all smear – code for ‘cruel and heartless’, deployed to intimidate and to shut down any challenge to the left. So saying that family disintegration is generally a disaster for children is ‘right-wing’. Saying that children are betrayed by schools that fail to teach them to read is ‘right-wing’. Saying it was right to go to war in Iraq (as David himself has discovered) is ‘right-wing’. And saying that Israel is more sinned against than sinning is so ‘right-wing’ it’s off the graph.
"But if anyone is being ‘cruel and heartless’ on these issues, it is the left. And wreathed in sanctimony, they ostracise and punish anyone with an opposing view who they present as swivel-eyed lunatics. BBC producers regularly tell me I am referred to within that most objective of corporations as ‘mad’. Jews on the left are just as bad. One Jewish publisher reacted to a book proposal from me by declaring, ‘I’d rather take ricin than publish her’.
"The left are simply obsessed by ‘the right’. Their position is often conceived principally in opposition to it. Proclaiming that they alone are moral – because they are not ‘cruel and heartless’ – they thus demonise and dehumanise the opposing point of view, to which their minds are terrifyingly closed. It is a pathology which has got far worse since the collapse of communism. These are ideologues without an ideology; and old habits die hard."
Melanie Phillips:
...
"...some years ago I started to change my view about the left, who confusingly often call themselves liberals. I began to realise they were not liberal at all, but profoundly illiberal. And I began to grasp that far from acting -- as they trumpeted at every opportunity -- in the interests of the poor and oppressed, just about everything they did trapped them in that condition.
"On every issue where there were true victims – education failure, family breakdown, drug abuse -- they denied the truth and substituted instead lies, ideology and propaganda. They were against western culture, external moral rules and self-discipline. They were for nihilism, the worship of the self and gross personal irresponsibility.
"And any deviation from this they labelled ‘right-wing’. Emptied of meaning, this has become a catch-all smear – code for ‘cruel and heartless’, deployed to intimidate and to shut down any challenge to the left. So saying that family disintegration is generally a disaster for children is ‘right-wing’. Saying that children are betrayed by schools that fail to teach them to read is ‘right-wing’. Saying it was right to go to war in Iraq (as David himself has discovered) is ‘right-wing’. And saying that Israel is more sinned against than sinning is so ‘right-wing’ it’s off the graph.
"But if anyone is being ‘cruel and heartless’ on these issues, it is the left. And wreathed in sanctimony, they ostracise and punish anyone with an opposing view who they present as swivel-eyed lunatics. BBC producers regularly tell me I am referred to within that most objective of corporations as ‘mad’. Jews on the left are just as bad. One Jewish publisher reacted to a book proposal from me by declaring, ‘I’d rather take ricin than publish her’.
"The left are simply obsessed by ‘the right’. Their position is often conceived principally in opposition to it. Proclaiming that they alone are moral – because they are not ‘cruel and heartless’ – they thus demonise and dehumanise the opposing point of view, to which their minds are terrifyingly closed. It is a pathology which has got far worse since the collapse of communism. These are ideologues without an ideology; and old habits die hard."
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