Balladeer's Blog

Nick Cohen

I make no secret of the fact that I’m tired of the outdated Liberal vs Conservative paradigm. I considered myself a Liberal back before the political left became constrictive and totalitarian and adopted the insane attitude of “Islam: Right or Wrong!”

I periodically post about fellow former leftists who have also recognized that Liberals throughout the Western World have become everything they pretend to oppose. They’re just better at P.R. than right-wingers are.

England’s Nick Cohen – an atheist like I am – made plenty of remarks I can relate to:

“(A Liberal) cannot break with the pressures that enforce conformity in his left-wing world and accept the real reason why many leave the left. It ought to be obvious. The left is why they leave the left. Never more so than today.

” The shift of left-wing thought towards movements it would once have denounced as racist, imperialist and fascistic has been building for years. I come from a left-wing family … and I don’t regret any of it. But slowly, too slowly I am ashamed to say, I began to notice that left-wing politics had turned rancid.

” … If they were true to their professed principles modern leftists would search out secular forces in the Muslim world — Iranian and Arab feminists, say, Kurdish socialists or Muslim liberals struggling against reactionary clerics here in Britain — and embrace them as comrades.

” Instead, they preferred to excuse half the anti-western theocrats and dictators on the planet. As, in their quiet way, did many in the liberal mainstream.” 

” I realise now what I should have known years ago. The causes I most care about — secularism, freedom of speech, universal human rights — are not their (Liberals’) causes. Whatever they pretend, when the crunch comes, they will always put sectarian unity first, and find reasons to be elsewhere.” 

The absolute best parts of Mr Cohen’s musings Continue reading →