At Worldcrunch João Pereira Coutinho explains how today’s lack of moderation isn’t solely a quality of American politics:
Today, Tim Farron’s case demonstrates just how modern liberalism has turned into a form of religion. A form of inquisition too: Whoever doesn’t sing from the same hymn sheet is a heretic who deserves to burn in the flames of progressive vanity. Politics is not a place for consensus between distinct views of the common good. It is a courthouse where sinners have to confess their crimes (on their knees) and embrace the Truth (with a capital T).
The problem with this medieval view of things does not lie just in the “intolerance” it reveals. It lies also in the quantity of “empty men” it promotes: creatures devoid of any interior life who defer, like robots, to whatever is in vogue.
Those who destroy individual conscience in the name of the “common good” are destroying the last barrier against arbitrary power. A barrier they might one day need if the pendulum of fanaticism changes direction.
The only disagreement I have with those paragraphs is the use of the word “if” in the last sentence. It should be “when”.
Agree but would add that I don’t see any moderation from so-called “conservatives” either.
I hear/read few voices that practice that sort of moderation and most seem to lean libertarian.