Ten outstanding quotes/excerpts in a critique of the former fascist left by one of their own. Interesting how the most damning tales of Totalitarianism, Communism, Nazism, etc. are from those who survived it.
Award winning British journalist and best-selling author Melanie Phillips’ “Guardian Angel.” “Guardian Angel” tells the story of how Phillips started her career in British journalism on the Left in the late 1970s, only to become a stalwart Liberal culture warrior, as reflected in her positions on Islam, Israel, feminism, education, economics, environmentalism and a whole host of other issues that have earned her the wrath and contempt of European Leftists, particularly among media peers.
1.The “Chicago Way” (in London) ”I always believed in the duty of a journalist to uphold truth over lies, follow the evidence where it led and fight abuses of power wherever they were to be found. I gradually realised, however, that the left was not on the side of truth, reason, and justice, but instead promoted ideology, malice, and oppression. Rather than fighting the abuse of power, it embodied it.
Through demonising its enemies in this way, the left has undermined the possibility of finding common ground and all but destroyed rational discourse. This is because, as shown by its reaction to Lady Thatcher’s death, it substitutes insult and abuse for argument and reasoned disagreement.”
3.The Overton Window ”More devastatingly still, by twisting the meaning of words such as liberal, compassion, justice and many others into their opposites, it has hijacked the centre-ground of politics. Left-wing ideology is now falsely said to constitute the moderate centre-ground, while the true centre-ground is now vilified as ‘the right’. This is as mind-bending as it is destructive, for it has introduced a fatal confusion into political debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Redefining the true middle ground of politics as ‘right-wing’ has served to besmirch and toxify the commitment to truth, reason, decency, and reality which characterises where most people happen to situate their thinking. At the same time, by loudly asserting that left-wing ideology is really ‘centrist’, the left has succeeded in presenting extremist, antisocial, or even nihilistic ideas as unarguably good, and all dissent is promptly vilified as ‘extreme’…For by asserting that it embodied the centre ground, what the left actually did was to hijack the centre ground and substitute its own extreme values — thus shifting Britain’s centre of political and moral gravity to the left, and besmirching as extremists those on the true centre ground. And something very similar has happened in the US, where language has been appropriated in order to engineer a seismic shift in attitudes, concealed by a mind-bending reversal of the meaning of words.”
4. The Middle Eastern double standard and Leftist racism ”In a leader conference one day, I asked why the Guardian appeared to be pursuing a double standard in its coverage of the Middle East. Why did it afford next-to-no coverage of Arab atrocities against other Arabs while devoting acres of space to attacking Israel for defending itself against terrorism? The answer I received from my colleagues that day stunned me. Of course there was a double standard, they said. How could there not be? The Third World did not subscribe to the same ethical beliefs as the West about the value of human life. The West therefore was not entitled to judge any mass killings in the Third World by its own standards. That would be racist.
6. The negligent welfare state ”The experience of those years also told me that something was going very wrong with the welfare state. It wasn’t just the lack of provision, which meant that the only care available for my mother from the local authority was a few hours a week with untrained carers who had been recruited off the street. It was also a callousness and indifference amongst the supposedly caring services. It was the hospital nurses who, when my mother broke her hip and through her feebleness was unable to move at all in her hospital bed, left her food and water unwrapped or out of reach and refused to make her comfortable; and the ward sister who, when I complained, told me with a straight face that my mother, who could barely put one foot in front of the other, had a short time before been ‘skipping round the ward’. I realised then that in the National Health Service, Britain’s sanctified temple of altruism, compassion, and decency, if you were old, feeble, and poor you just didn’t stand a chance.”
In the National Health Service…if you were old, feeble, and poor you just didn’t stand a chance.
The rest:
http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/0...est-selling-british-author-who-left-the-left/
Award winning British journalist and best-selling author Melanie Phillips’ “Guardian Angel.” “Guardian Angel” tells the story of how Phillips started her career in British journalism on the Left in the late 1970s, only to become a stalwart Liberal culture warrior, as reflected in her positions on Islam, Israel, feminism, education, economics, environmentalism and a whole host of other issues that have earned her the wrath and contempt of European Leftists, particularly among media peers.
1.The “Chicago Way” (in London) ”I always believed in the duty of a journalist to uphold truth over lies, follow the evidence where it led and fight abuses of power wherever they were to be found. I gradually realised, however, that the left was not on the side of truth, reason, and justice, but instead promoted ideology, malice, and oppression. Rather than fighting the abuse of power, it embodied it.
Through demonising its enemies in this way, the left has undermined the possibility of finding common ground and all but destroyed rational discourse. This is because, as shown by its reaction to Lady Thatcher’s death, it substitutes insult and abuse for argument and reasoned disagreement.”
Through demonising its enemies…the left has…all but destroyed rational discourse
2.Leftist totalitarianism ”Moreover, while there were undoubtedly serious differences, the distinction between tankie totalitarians and the soft left served to mask the fact that the soft left was also totalitarian in its instincts. It may have recoiled from the tanks rolling into Hungary or Czechoslovakia, but it most certainly parked its own tanks on the lawns of British society. From there it proceeded to lay siege to the fortresses of Western culture, crushing all dissent beneath its tracks.”
3.The Overton Window ”More devastatingly still, by twisting the meaning of words such as liberal, compassion, justice and many others into their opposites, it has hijacked the centre-ground of politics. Left-wing ideology is now falsely said to constitute the moderate centre-ground, while the true centre-ground is now vilified as ‘the right’. This is as mind-bending as it is destructive, for it has introduced a fatal confusion into political debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Redefining the true middle ground of politics as ‘right-wing’ has served to besmirch and toxify the commitment to truth, reason, decency, and reality which characterises where most people happen to situate their thinking. At the same time, by loudly asserting that left-wing ideology is really ‘centrist’, the left has succeeded in presenting extremist, antisocial, or even nihilistic ideas as unarguably good, and all dissent is promptly vilified as ‘extreme’…For by asserting that it embodied the centre ground, what the left actually did was to hijack the centre ground and substitute its own extreme values — thus shifting Britain’s centre of political and moral gravity to the left, and besmirching as extremists those on the true centre ground. And something very similar has happened in the US, where language has been appropriated in order to engineer a seismic shift in attitudes, concealed by a mind-bending reversal of the meaning of words.”
4. The Middle Eastern double standard and Leftist racism ”In a leader conference one day, I asked why the Guardian appeared to be pursuing a double standard in its coverage of the Middle East. Why did it afford next-to-no coverage of Arab atrocities against other Arabs while devoting acres of space to attacking Israel for defending itself against terrorism? The answer I received from my colleagues that day stunned me. Of course there was a double standard, they said. How could there not be? The Third World did not subscribe to the same ethical beliefs as the West about the value of human life. The West therefore was not entitled to judge any mass killings in the Third World by its own standards. That would be racist.
The left actually abandons the oppressed of the world..all the time weeping crocodile tears for them
<snip>
6. The negligent welfare state ”The experience of those years also told me that something was going very wrong with the welfare state. It wasn’t just the lack of provision, which meant that the only care available for my mother from the local authority was a few hours a week with untrained carers who had been recruited off the street. It was also a callousness and indifference amongst the supposedly caring services. It was the hospital nurses who, when my mother broke her hip and through her feebleness was unable to move at all in her hospital bed, left her food and water unwrapped or out of reach and refused to make her comfortable; and the ward sister who, when I complained, told me with a straight face that my mother, who could barely put one foot in front of the other, had a short time before been ‘skipping round the ward’. I realised then that in the National Health Service, Britain’s sanctified temple of altruism, compassion, and decency, if you were old, feeble, and poor you just didn’t stand a chance.”
In the National Health Service…if you were old, feeble, and poor you just didn’t stand a chance.
The rest:
http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/0...est-selling-british-author-who-left-the-left/
