Melanie Phillips On A World Gone Mad

by Kathryn Jean Lopez - May 20, 2010 - National Review Online

INTERVIEW: Melanie Phillips, the British journalist, author of The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power.

LOPEZ: You write that progressives, Islamists, environmentalists, fascists, militant atheists, and religious fanatics are “united by a common desire to bring about through human agency the perfection of the world.” Is this becoming more apparent?

PHILLIPS: It may seem strange to lump all these ideologies together since they are all so different. But, when you look at them, it is immediately apparent that they are all at root utopian, millenarian visions of the perfection of the world through human agency — the age-old recipe for totalitarian terror. The idea that fascism is in a wholly different place from the Left is in my view quite misplaced: Although conventionally one is described as “right” and the other as “left,” this is historically and philosophically inaccurate; they share common roots in the repudiation of individual reason and liberty.

This interview of one of the leading writers of our day is a very long but extremely worthwhile read. I highly recommend it if you care about what is happening in our world. Melanie Phillips is frequently brilliant.