After reading posts about Rowan Williams’ recent musings over the role of religious laws in the UK at Butterflies and Wheels and Shuggy’s Place, and the associated comments, it strikes me that something malodorous squats over the heart of the liberal left. Both comment threads have rants which appear to be more interested in scoring points against other liberals/leftists, rather than reasoned debate. Butterflies and Wheels is smeared in a particularly obnoxious posting, like so:

The terrible Muslims are on the march, taking over everything, and the weak-minded liberals are blind to the Muslim danger. So-called “tolerance” is actually a weakness of the spirit which will see our treasured society ground down by the feared outsiders. That’s definitely what’s happening. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.

Over at Shuggy’s another commentator leaps to the defense of Rowan Williams, with a bizarre rant about that “fucking speech” and how everybody didn’t understand it, except him of course. While he is able to understand Williams’ dense prose, he completely misses the point of Shuggy’s entirely reasonable, and clearly written, post. The author of that particular comment is behind a website that:

1. Aims “to bring together and re-invigorate the liberal-left in Britain”
2. Wishes to constantly ask “what should the liberal-left position be on this issue?”

It strikes me that point one is going to be rather difficult if there are a significant number of those self-proclaimed liberals attempting to argue that people that disagree with them are anti-intellectual and stupid. Furthermore, point 2 is superfluous, since the owner of that site hardly needs to ask what the liberal-left position is. It is quite clear that his superior knowledge and intellect allows him to judge what the correct position should be.

I have a suspicion that there is something other than the debate about Williams’ speech and interview on the BBC motivating the animus in these comments.

I can’t put my finger on it though. What could it possibly be?