Writing in the Observer yesterday, David Aaronovitch spoke of an orthodoxy within left opinion today 'as stifling as anything imposed on the faithful by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith'. Too right. So self-assured is this orthodoxy that it's scarcely conscious of its own assumptions. It just kind of seeps out with things that are said in passing, as if there were no other possible view, let alone a creditable one. David Aaronovitch highlights one example of this when, in response to Richard Eyre, he says:
Could 'left' not even possibly encompass wanting to see a fascist dictatorship toppled...?Well, quite. I gave a North American example of the same sort of thing a few days ago: in the assumption that nobody capable of empathy could have supported the Iraq war. Here is another example - Clifford Longley writing shortly before the death of the Pope. He writes not uncritically, but in presenting some putative good points Longley says:
[T]his was also a man who added to the Catholic catechism the unexpectedly liberal doctrine that capital punishment had no place in the modern world and who vehemently denounced both of America's wars against Iraq, even the first.There it is: 'this was a man who...' Longley, of course, may think what he pleases about the first and the second Iraq wars, but he's not content just to register his view; that John Paul II shared it becomes a commendable quality of character, of the kind of man he was. As if to say (from the first Iraq war) that, for example, Michael Walzer must be a lesser man; or (from the second one) that Ann Clwyd must be a lesser woman. How does the (supposed) rightness and wrongness of the political standpoint in these cases rub off so on the character imputed to the persons - unless there is only one possible truth in the matter and moral virtue sits beside it?
And then again, here is Neal Lawson writing critically about New Labour:
And at every turn the war in Iraq drains away the government's moral legitimacy.That's it, just one sentence; no support of it is required. For there couldn't be another view. Except that - as everybody knows - there is. And there has been from the beginning. Legitimacy hasn't drained away, there's simply been a major division of opinion. What is most puzzling about the whole thing is why so many people who would doubtless profess a commitment to liberal principles have been unable to cope with that. (But see also here.)