Here’s an excellent example of saying a lot of things that aren’t new, but restating them in new and fresh ways. Wordsmith and satirist Mark Steyn has a trenchant and devastating column on Powell worship, media bias, media inability to see their bias, lack of diversity of thought among the left and newsrooms, their misappropriation of the term “liberal,” and the myth of small “independent” bookstores. None of them new themes, but well worth a reminder of, and supported by recent and ongoing examples.

So supporting “internationalism,” “multilateralism,” abortion and racial quotas means you’re “moderate” and “nonideological”? And anyone who feels differently is an extreme ideologue? Absolutely. The New York Times is rarely so explicit, at least in its “news” pages, but the aim of a large swathe of the left is not to win the debate but to get it cancelled before it starts. You can do that in any number of ways — busting up campus appearances by conservatives, “hate crimes” laws, Canada’s ghastly human-rights commissions, the more “enlightened” court judgments, the EU’s recent decision to criminalize “xenophobia,” or merely, as the Times does, by declaring your side of every issue to be the “moderate” and “nonideological” position.

As usual, the whole thing should be read.