“Look up the meaning of ideology in a good dictionary and you will find that liberalism…fits the description”.

Fits what description? In any case, I think it would be best to look up the meaning of liberalism instead. After all, every political stance can fit an “ism” and an ideology.

“I would hasten to add here…that there can be ideologies that are intrinsically evil in themselves, like Nazism”.

True, but that’s another pointless fact.

“I wrote that liberalism could be extreme and/or totalitarian depending on the way it is applied by its adherents”.

This applies to any political position, which makes it a useless fact.

“One example is the way a court in Northern Ireland found a baker guilty of discrimination because while he had no objection to baking a cake for a same-sex couple who were getting married, he was not ready to add a message promoting same-sex marriage”.

I disagree in principle with the court ruling. However this all depends on the laws of the country. And this has nothing to do with liberalism.

In any case, I don’t see Monarchies as liberal at all, even though many policies in the UK are quite liberal.

Look up the meaning of ideology in a good dictionary and you will find that liberalism, like all “manner of thinking characteristic of a class or individual, ideas at the basis of some economic or political theory or system” fits the description.

I would hasten to add here, something that I failed to edit successfully, that there can be ideologies that are intrinsically evil in themselves, like Nazism.

If you read carefully what I have written you should appreciate that I wrote that liberalism could be extreme and/or totalitarian depending on the way it is applied by its adherents.

One example is the way a court in Northern Ireland found a baker guilty of discrimination because while he had no objection to baking a cake for a same-sex couple who were getting married, he was not ready to add a message promoting same-sex marriage.

This is one perverse way of imposing so-called freedom. The baker did not tamper with the freedom of the couple to marry and celebrate with a cake, but his own freedom not to promote what he did not believe in, was denied.

“Like all ideologies, and Liberalism is an ideology, liberalism could be extreme and intolerant”.

How so?

“Make no mistake about it: it is not the “ism” that could be extreme and/or totalitarian but the human beings who follow that ideology”

If it is human beings who may or may not choose to be extreme and/or totalitarian, then it is not the ideology itself that is extreme/totalitarian.

You might as well say all humans may or may not be extreme/totalitarian, which is true but meaningless.
“especially when they seek to impose it on the society in which they live”.

Freedom, by definition, cannot be imposed. If you mean something else, I think it’s best to give examples.

Maltese people who live in Britain do not get homesick for Malta – not in a certain generation at least.

The two cultures dovetail and the language is familiar.

The cultural differences between Russia and the United States are insurmountable. Each is alien to the other.

You are being too simplistic and dismissive in this comment.

Solzhenitsyn’s disillusion with the moral values he found in the USA was openly declared many, many, years before he returned to Russia.

Incidentally, I am quite old now and I am not getting homesick and resettling in Malta, even though I love Malta as dearly as ever.

Perhaps the same goes with your labelling Maltese society as being “historically nihilistic”.

I have never come across any study to support such a claim. Yes, there are Maltese who see nothing positive in the society in which we live, but to generalise this as applying to all Maltese, present and historically, is a somewhat over the top.

True liberals value restraint, particularly when actions might infringe on the rights of others.

2. Since morality is compatible with religion but independent of it, there is no need to replace religion with anything, just as long as one keeps sound morals some of which are self-evident and others understood by reason and logic.

3. True liberals value restraint, particularly when these infringe the rights of others.

4. No one in the Malta Labour Party, and obviously none of their supporters and voters, is a liberal.