Earlier this week, my colleague Tony Walker made a plea for a more civil, respectful public debate uncluttered by the slogans, epithets and abuse that are the currency of the culture wars.

As he observed, "political correctness", "identity politics" and "virtue signalling" are now mere terms of abuse. One could compile a book of such arid labels and insults which have become a substitute for argument. Their primary purpose now is to situate those who deploy them on the political spectrum. They are ostentatious displays of allegiance and belief. Befitting the lingua franca of the culture wars, they are designed to assault rather than enlighten, to silence rather than explain. They are a call to arms to rally fellow travellers rather than an argument to persuade the uncommitted or opponents.

Illustration: Simon Letch Credit:

Similarly, Labor MP Ed Husic explained his decision to leave Twitter. It is a sewer dominated by the unhinged, the anonymous, the cowardly and the strident. Normal Australians by and large do not randomly assail total strangers with abuse about their appearance, their sexuality, their race, their political views or their religion. Of course, it does happen in both the real and the virtual worlds, though with vastly more intensity and frequency in the latter. Our society would disintegrate if the rancid abuse of Twitter was the norm in civil society. This observation renders me a "snowflake" among the latter-day Voltaires who espouse untrammelled free speech.

The right-wing obsession with the Enlightenment and free speech is amusing. It is underpinned by shabby faux scholarship, which now sees freedom of religion and freedom of speech as inextricably linked. They are not. The first glimmers of the Enlightenment were a revolt against the obscurantism and despotism of the Catholic Church in Europe. Indeed, the modern nation state emerged from the carnage of religious wars among sects of Christianity in Europe which culminated in the Treaties of Westphalia.