Maria Steen had a column in The Irish Times on Saturday which caused a big online response. The topic of her article is crucial; are liberals as liberal and tolerant as they purport to be?

Increasingly, many liberals seek to shut down debate on substantive issues. Instead debates (such as they are) are intra-liberal ones, for example, should the three-day waiting time before a woman has an abortion remain or be lifted?

Meanwhile, those who dissent from liberal positions on various issues can expect to be demonised.

As Maria writes: “For those on the other side, be they Catholics or political conservatives or anyone who does not subscribe to the new liberal orthodoxy, they are no longer expected merely to tolerate those views with which they disagree, but to affirm and celebrate them – anything less is seen as bigotry or any one of a hundred categories of phobia. Meanwhile, secular liberals can be as intolerant as they like, verbally attacking people and their characters while almost never engaging with and debating their ideas.”

You can read Maria’s column in full here and get a flavour of the online discussion here.