VictorDavis: May 2013

I can relate to Melanie Phillips' awakening to the reality of the ideological left. The first paragraph describing her time at The Guardian reminds me a bit of my early days at the CBC. She writes:

Those of us who worked there had a fixed belief in our own superiority and righteousness. We saw ourselves as clever and civilised champions of liberal thought.
I felt loved and cherished, the favoured child of a wonderful and impressive family.
To my colleagues, there was virtually no question that the poor were the victims of circumstances rather than being accountable for their own behaviour and that the state was a wholly benign actor in the lives of individuals.It never occurred to us that there could be another way of looking at the world.
Above all, we knew we were on the side of the angels, while across the barricades hatchet-faced Right-wingers represented the dark forces of human nature and society that we were all so proud to be against. But then Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979; and although at The Guardian it was a given that she was a heartless, narrow-minded, suburban nightmare, I found myself listening, despite myself, to a point of view I had not heard before.
Iconic: Although Melanie Phillips generally toed the standard Leftist line, when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, she found herself listening, despite herself, to a point of view she had not heard before
These Thatcherites were not the usual upper-class squires, but people whose backgrounds were similar to my own.

They were promoting the values with which I had been brought up in my Labour-supporting family — all about opportunities for social betterment, hard work, taking responsibility for oneself.

I always believed a good journalist should uphold truth over lies and follow the evidence where it led.

Trudging round godforsaken estates as the paper’s special reporter on social affairs, I could see the stark reality of what our supposedly enlightened liberal society was becoming.

The scales began to fall from my eyes. I came to realise that the Left was not on the side of truth, reason and justice.

Instead, it promoted ideology, malice and oppression. Rather than fighting abuse of power, it embodied it.

Sunday, May 5, 2013