Ed Vaizey is a True Cameroon and a phoney Liberal. You only have to look at the way modern Tories talk about Social Liberalism. For modern Tories, a social Liberal is someone who is tolerant of different lifestyles. The term became current when Michael Portillo held sway and the Portillistas were trying to take on their authoritarian wing. With no sense of Liberal history, they did not even seem aware they were misusing the term.

More to the point "Liberal Tories" have no Liberal language to talk about helping the underprivileged, raising up the poor and empowering the disenfranchised. Whilst Liberals have a rich philosophical history of wrestling with positive and negative freedom, the Tories (and Vaizey) fall back into the paternalism of "compassionate conservatism." We do not need paternalists in the twenty first century any more than we need the Statism of the Labour party.

I would be interested to see what a One-Nation Tory would say to the charge that "Liberal Tories have no Liberal language to talk about helping the underprivileged, raising up the poor and empowering the disenfranchised."

But then again - your point may well be that there don't seem to be any One Nation Tories left around these days.

Dear Neal,

Thank you for writing your piece on Freedom. I think the language you use is provocative, but you raise
an important point. I agree that our society has become more acquisitive, more materialistic. However, I
think the reason that has happened isn't really about capitalism, and I think alternative mantras are very
dangerous.

You have made an interesting case for how our society has developed into the materialistic mess you perceive.
What I think is missing from this analysis is the feminist and sexual revolutions, which I believe are driving
a lot of what you are worried about, but also a lot of what is better about society today from some
mythical better, more communitarian past. The dramatic changes in the role of women, and how men and women
(and of course men/men and women/women) relate to each other have changed the structure of families and
of society dramatically. There is a library out there to address these issues, but I believe that part
of the decline in community spirit has to do with the radical change in women's roles, the decline of the
nuclear family, and the decline of religious community--all driven in part by these irreversible
revolutions. Can we really put this genie back in the bottle? I don't think so. I don't think we should
want to. The reality is, for economic and a host of other reasons, women are going to work, and so
the volunteer, religiously based workforce that created so much of the local community support we all crave
is now engaged in other activities. Bob Puttnam talks about this, and about the insidious role of televison
and computers, in disengaging social spirit. I don't think all these issues can be put down to capitalism.

Second, although the urge to shop certainly isn't inspiring, I think there are worse motivators. Not to be
glib, but I would rather that shopping was the opiate of the masses rather than religion. We can see from ceenturies of experience what happens when religion, or another utopian vision, becomes the driving force in a society. That leads to repression and violence. Although there are muggings for IPODs, I venture to say that a materialistic society is just too busy and too self-absorbed to go on a crusade. And personally, I think that is no bad thing.

All the best,

Jennifer