We do and we don't. Anyone with such a clear ideological view of how the world should or shouldn't be is inherently dangerous whether they're right wing or left wing. That's about as far as I can sum up the liberal positon.

The modern faux-liberals who bleat inconsistently about tolerance and compassion in the least compassionate and intolerant ways imaginable miss the mark of what liberalism is about. They will hate the left in the ways that you've described. Their campagins are self serving and forged in the crucible of identity politics. It's not about helping, its about being seen to help. Those people are all rhetoric, all fur coat and no knickers to quote my grandmother - and you and I share a profound dislike of that sort of person.

Those are people who use an ill conceived concept of what liberalism is as a weapon rather than a shield. People who want their own sort of 'liberal' society where they get to define the rules and decide who the good guys and bad guys are. That isn't how liberalism works. True liberals are almost always in the centre, on guard against both the left and the right. In short, we don't trust anyone with a firm ideological stance and all the answers because the 20th Century is littered with the corpses of those that did.

I enjoy your writing very much. I disagree with a lot of it - but it's nice to read articles written by a genuine lefty rather than a faux liberal wearing a beret and trying to pass themselves off as a socialist.