Sunday 23 August 2020

An Overdue Return

It's not often that Radio 4 delivers a welcome surprise these days: usually what's on that ever more 'woke' network is neither surprising nor welcome. This morning, however, I was delighted to find that John Gray has returned to A Point of View. After a seemingly interminable run of speakers dealing only in predictable metroliberal banalities – the likes of Howard Jacobson, Will Self, A.L. Kennedy and Sarah Dunant – I was beginning to wonder if Gray would ever return. Return he has, though, with a typically cool, lucid and incisive account of the sad demise of tolerance as a popular virtue, and the dire effects of the new quasi-religion he calls 'illiberal liberalism' (he's also called it 'ultraliberalism' – liberalism that overshoots to the point where it becomes the very opposite of classical liberalism). I'd only take issue with him over his endorsement of 'hate speech' as something to be proscribed (I don't think 'hate' should come into it – only incitement to violence). Anyway, here's the link – enjoy...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000ltfd

No comments:

Post a Comment