I wrote this essay from a Liberal perspective and would not usually post it on Labourhome, however, I feel it's content just as important to social democrats as it is Liberals. there is a need for us to defend political correctness and I do not feel that need is being met in either quantity or quality. Discrimination and prejudice hurts everyone and political correctness is there to combat this. This needs to be explained, I hope I did an OK job.

For anyone who hasn't seen the latest episode of 'A Daily Show with John Stewart' (I deeply advise you to do so now if you haven't) you will have missed one of those interviews you really just had to see. Jonah Goldberg, author of 'Liberal Fascism: the secret history of the American left from Mussolini to the politics of Meaning', seems to be convinced that American Clintonesque liberalism is fascist. The interview went on for 18 minutes (I think that might be a record) so the editors had to cut it down to a 6 minute production which Jon Stewart admitted was 'as choppy as hell', boy I'd of liked to have seen the rest.

Nobody seemed to like my last post about liberalism very much (or atleast they were apathetic enough to ignore it) so I decided that although blowing social liberalism's trumpet is not really an adequate topic for a dedicated Labour site (I am labour, but liberal labour and thus dislike Brown and Blair with an intensity) perhaps certain Labouritsis would enjoy reading something a little bit more critical of the party I'm currently affiliated with (the lib dims is apparently what their called around her (very clever)). Anyway if any of you are looking for a rather biased self critical analysis of the libdem leadership contest from the inside you've come to the right place,  enjoy!

The new right has won, atleast in economic thought. Both the Tories and the New Labour parliamentary leadership (although definitely not the party membership yet) have accepted their fundamental ideas of economic thought. Of applying marketisation, and thus monetary value to nearly all sectors of government intervention and then assuming that this will produce the best results. I do not believe that the mainstream of Liberal democrats have yet accepted this idea although I have met the occasional member who has. However there are those who associate the very meaning of liberalism with new right economics. This is my response, I only hope that there are labour party members with the guts to challenge the new right consensus too.

I've always had my suspicions. With people like Melanie Philips (Daily Mail) believing climate change to be some sort of socialist conspiracy and the Sun describing environmentalists as 'green hippy lunatics' its easy to feel sceptical towards these papers when they talk about green issues. If one ever wanted proof though of the absurd lengths these papers will go to to stop action on climate change then go no further than this weeks private eye. It has an excellent story showing the amount of trash that came out of these papers preceding the heathrow protest. Read on and enjoy.

I'm a (social) liberal democrat (don't let that put you off too much) and I don't usually post on this site (although I have my own blogging site at http://aradicalwrites.blogspot.com). However, some issues go beyond party lines and the environment should be one of them. The first obstacle of getting people to accept that there is a problem has been overcome, but finding a way to deal with it is going to be far more difficult.

Democracy!
People power!
And we've got it!
......right?