Melanie the Optimist

Melanie Philips seizes upon a government measure to alter one aspect of Britian's "human rights" legislation to argue that "the tide is turning" against the lefty "thought police." However, that entails surmounting an immense hurdle:

The point about the Left-wingers who police and thus control our public debate is this: they believe above all else that they alone occupy the moral high ground.

They thus divide the world into good and bad. Only their own view is to be permitted; any dissent is by definition evil.

So all dissenters are Right-wing, all Right-wingers are evil and all who oppose the liberal consensus are therefore evil Right-wingers who must be damned as beyond the pale.

This is, of course, a totally closed thought process, similar to the totalitarian tyrannies imposed by the medieval Church or Stalinism.

Yet this monstrous repudiation of reason has effectively hijacked public debate...

The question is: Can we effectively "un"-hijack it? I certainly hope so, but I'm not laying bets on it.