I'm pretty sure I heard today's edition of Radio 4's Any Questions 40 years ago

I was reading the Telegraph late this morning, and steadily becoming more depressed. Apparently, British veterans are to be charged with murdering an IRA leader in Northern Ireland 44 years ago. A Royal Marine charged with murdering a Taliban captive will be spending Christmas in jail because his bail hearing has been postponed until the new year. Pilots, aircrew and baggage handlers are staging a strike over Christmas. The worst prison riot for 25 years has taken place in Birmingham, possibly fuelled by drugs and a lack of access to television. Italy is proposing to drop fidelity vows from the marriage contract, because they represent "an outdated and obsolete view of marriage". Queen Mary University of London has removed a foundation stone laid by King Leopold II of Belgium because the Pan African Society said it represented "imperialism"...

...A twelve-year old Iraqi-German (i.e. Iraqi) boy is being held on suspicion of attempting to explode a nail bomb at a Christmas market....

 I eventually let the newspaper slip from nerveless fingers.  Why is this crap still happening, Oh Lord? Why are British soldiers being remorselessly hounded by their own authorities? Why aren't selfish, vindictive bastards who disrupt people's lives by striking needlessly and unjustifiably immediately fired? Why are prisoners allowed to get hold of drugs - and I mean any drugs at all? Why would anyone imagine that it's unreasonable to ask someone getting married to promise not to cheat on their spouse: if you want to sleep around, don't get married! And why wouldn't the university authorities simple tell the Pan African Society to go and boil their silly, addled little heads?

The stupid. It hurts.

Slowly, as I got my breathing back under control, I became aware of the voices issuing from the radio (don't worry, it was on at the time - I wasn't hallucinating). Nothing any of them said made any sense at all. There was an angry-sounding man telling us that the way to pay for social care in this country would be to take the money from "The Rich", who should be made to "pay their fair share".  Did this ignorant cretin seriously not know that the top 3000 earners in the UK pay more in tax than the bottom nine million tax-payers, that over 43% of adults don't pay any income tax at all, and that, when George Osborne dropped the 50 top rate of tax, the rich started paying more tax? Look it up on the internet, you fool. Trying to expropriate even more money from the rich leaves the government with less money to spend on "social care" - or anything else...

Oh, what's the point. I've been listening to these nincompoops peddle this garbage for the whole of my adult life. As the other panelists piled in with their own brands of idiocy on today's Any Questions,  I realised that - with a few names changed and political jargon rejigged - I could have been listening to an edition of the programme from 17th December, 1976. These people have learned precisely nothing since then.

Liberalism, left-liberalism, socialism, leftism - call it what you like. It rots the brain, it destroys the moral faculties, and it is impervious to the vast mass of evidence which proves that their "philosophy" (if such a term can be applied to their selfish, vacuous emotionalism)  ruins people's lives wherever and whenever and however it is applied.

Next time I settle down to read the paper, I will make sure the radio isn't on. And I might not bother reading the paper.

Let me leave you with the infinitely wise observations of the American comedian-turned-political commentator, Evan Sayet, from his address to the conservative Heritage Foundation in 2007:

"I assume that just about everybody in this room agrees that the Democrats are wrong on just about every issue. 

Well, I'm here to propose to you that it's not "just about" every issue; it's quite literally every issue. And it's not just wrong; it's as wrong as wrong can be; it's 180 degrees from right; it is diametrically opposed to that which is good, right, and successful.

What I discovered is that this is not an accident. This is part of a philosophy that now dominates the whole of Western Europe and the Democratic Party today. I, like some others, call it Modern Liberalism. The Modern Liberal will invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviours that lead to failure over those that lead to success."

Amen.