Writing in New Statesman, Tim Farron argues that liberalism is not a given, is under threat and we should fight for it:
We cannot continue to take liberalism for granted. We need to articulate our liberal values loudly and clearly to stop a creep into authoritarianism built on a currency of fear. A “liberal voice” is the nagging voice in the back of your head shouting “If torture is wrong and if power corrupts then we cannot trust your word over ours. We need to hold you to account, and we must have the power to do that.”
You can read the full article here.
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One Comment
Another important article from Tim Farron – Liberalism is under attack from the Islamofascists on the one side and from those in the West who would look the other way and seek to dispense with Human Rights. The CIA report is important as it demonstrates that despite CIA and Neo-Con attempts to falsely claim intelligence coups derived from torture, none of these in-human techniques generated important intelligence as the senate report shows. In the light of the Pakistan and Sydney atrocities, moderate Muslim, Christian, Secular and other faith Liberals need to condemn human rights atrocities across the spectrum. We need to enable our intelligence community but ensure that rogue and institutionalised misconduct such as rendition, torture, assassination and internment are rejected as counterproductive to winning long term hearts and minds. We must not become the people the islamofascists falsely characterise us as.