And another liberal wakes up

A wonderful read from the London Daily Mail:

Why the Left hates families: MELANIE PHIILLIPS reveals how the selfish sneers of Guardianistas made her see how the Left actively fosters � and revels in � family breakdown...
For the Left, I am the target of deepest hatred.

For my trenchant views, expressed in this newspaper, they call me �insane�, �reactionary�, �racist�, a �Nazi�, a �shroudwaver�, a �witch� and a �warmonger�.

I have been accused of �unmatched depths of ignorance and bigotry� and being the �queen of mean�.

It was even suggested (in a particularly extreme spasm of hyperbole) that I eat broken bottles and kill rats with my teeth.

This resort to crude insult against anyone who dares to challenge their shibboleths is typical of the Left.

It doesn�t argue its case. It simply tries to shut down debate by bullying its targets and labelling them as extremists and enemies of humanity in order to frighten people away from listening to them.

But they reserve a special loathing for me. This is not just because I refuse to be cowed.

It�s because I was once one of them, one of the elect, a believer.

I come from the kind of family in which it was simply unthinkable to vote Conservative. For my parents, the Tory Party represented the boss class, while Labour supported the little man � people like us.

And then...

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.

A good example of the dichotomy between the left and right can be found with these two entries for Melanie Phillips. First, from Wikipedia:

Melanie Phillips (born 4 June 1951) is a British journalist, author, publisher and co-founder of EM: Melanie Phillips Electric Media. She started on the left of the political spectrum, writing for The Guardian and New Statesman. During the 1990s she moved to the right, and currently writes for the Daily Mail, covering political and social issues from a social conservative perspective. Phillips defines herself as a liberal who has "been mugged by reality".

Second, from RationalWiki:

Melanie Phillips, also known as "Mad Mel," is an ex-communist cum-right-wing battle-axe batshit insane British journalist. And that's putting it nicely. A former writer for The Guardian, she now predominantly writes for The Daily Mail and describes herself as "a liberal who has been mugged by reality."

A tip of the hat to The Barrister at Maggie's Farm who also mentions David Horowitz' excellent Radical Son and David Gelernter's Drawing Life. I would also add David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture -- an expansion of his epic 2008 post at the Village Voice (posted here).