Are you a real liberal? Welcome to the dark side.

To all you despondent liberals, Labour centrists, Tory modernisers, remainers, social justice warriors, social justice worriers, and everyone out there fretful about Brexit, depressed by Donald Trump, and scared of the alt-right, here is my festive message: get off the ground, you wusses. Put down your gingerbread lattes, and put up your dukes.                                       

So starts Matthew d'Ancona's  festive call to arms for what he - or at least the Guardian sub-editor - terms 'liberals'. Here, in a simple list is the Guardian's record of the good. If you are not in that list then you're on the side of evil.

If you think the vote to leave the EU was brilliant, liberating and something to be celebrated then you're in the same camp as people who believe there's a secret Muslim plan to attack the West by flooding us with refugees.

Or you might be someone who supports free speech believing a modicum of offence is a small price to pay for the power that comes with being able to speak our minds without being locked up. You're now on the same side of the line as people who think violent public abuse of minorities is acceptable in a decent society.             

Perhaps you're one of those innocent folk who think that individual humans have a right to choose. These 'liberals' have you right there with Fascists who want to ban public acts of faith, religious dress and introduce some sort of Test & Corporation Act to ensure we comply with a largely mythical 'Judeo-Christian' basis for our law or culture.

Maybe you think equality is a damn good thing. Something that should be protected in law. But that this doesn't expend to quotas of women, LGBT, ethnicity or disablement. Or to allowing self-appointed guardians of 'equal rights' to police our language or no platform those who offend against their narrow, excluding and divisive definition of diversity. Welcome to the dark side.

If you think our public debate is, in its original soviet sense, politically correct then watch out. Your belief that you should be allowed to say what you think, feel or know is true regardless of whether it offends the received and acceptable wisdom of the great and good - this is the target. Argument will be closed down, insults will be thrown and plain speaking condemned as the 'liberals' shut off debate and any challenge to their worldview.

Speaking personally, I think immigration is mostly a good thing, support open international trade, dislike regulation aimed at industrial protection and want a world where free individuals can engage in free exchange without the interference of the state. I dislike Donald Trump, think Nigel Farage is a twit and consider fascism to be just another statist abhorrence. I hate proposals from all sides in parliament to muzzle the press, snoop on our lives and - in the name of security or fighting terrorism - create a surveillance state Stalin would have killed to create.

But I also think gender quotas to be against the interests of women. That our approach to equalities defines people by their membership of a group rather than by their individuality. And that high taxes on income are a moral offence. Oh, and government in all its forms is too big, does too much that is dumb and fails on the things - such as health and care - that it claims are central to its purpose. I believe that it is no business of government to regulate how much sugar, salt, booze, fat or beef I consume, that the smoking ban in pubs was a bad idea, and that advertising is a force for good in a consumerist world.

I think you can believe what you damn well like - from the earth being flat through to the Queen being a lizard - but that you can't impose your beliefs on me or have them go unchallenged. So, yes, I'm happy to listen to sceptical arguments about climate change, to let people say that maybe we shouldn't get quite so knickered up about a marginal change in world temperatures. And I think that trying to silence or sideline these voices is quite simply the worst way to conduct any sort of debate about a massively important area of policy.

I could go on further. How our planning policies are a joke. Why the NHS is unsustainable without major and substantial change. How the idea of anti-social behaviour allows us to criminalise behaviour that is simply annoying. And that choice in education matters just as much as choice anywhere else - we don't have it and should get it. Vouchers would be a start.

You get my point? I'm properly right wing. The worse nightmare of the 'liberal'. Why? Because, unlike them, I actually am a liberal. I really do believe in liberty, choice, freedom and personal responsibility. If you think likewise then don't make the mistake a previous generation of liberals made. Don't make common cause with the anti-freedom centre left. Don't allow them to force you into their camp, to go along with their soft authoritarianism, just because you don't want to be in the same space as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and the "alt-right" racists.

Stand your ground and make the case for a free country. Again and again until they're bored with you telling them that they - the fake liberals - are as much the problem as the Trumps and Farages of this world, quite literally a force of reaction to those 'liberals' and their controlling, authoritarian world-view.

Welcome to the dark side.

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