Piers Morgan - Wake Up

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

FIRST EDITION

Piers Morgan 2020

Cover layout design by Claire Ward HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

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Piers Morgan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008392598

Ebook Edition October 2020 ISBN: 9780008392628

Version: 2020-09-19

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To John Ferriter.

Be the person your dog thinks you are.

The Worlds Gone Nuts

I dont know when it first hit me that the world had gone nuts.

It might have been when an American white woman named Rachel Dolezal self-identified as black on national television despite both her parents being white. That was nuts.

Or perhaps it was when Altrincham Grammar School for Girls in Manchester, England asked staff to refrain from calling female students girls because it might offend transgender students yet didnt change the gender-specific name of the school. That was nuts.

Maybe it was when there were strident calls from radical feminists who, like all radicals, destroy support for their cause by taking everything to absurd extremes for James Bond to be female. That was nuts.

Or was it when Google removed the egg from its salad emoji to make it more inclusive to vegans? That was nuts.

It might have been when CeCe Telfer, a tall, powerfully built transgender woman, was named Female Athlete of the Year for 2019 by a sports news website after smashing womens college and state sprinting records one year after competing far less successfully as a man. That was nuts.

Possibly, it was when students at the University of California, Berkeley demanded they be excused from exams because they didnt have enough privilege to be able to handle them emotionally. That was nuts.

Or was it when other students at Oxford University in England banned clapping at student union events in case it triggered anxiety? That was nuts.

I pondered if it was when Marks & Spencer started selling gay sandwiches the LGBT (lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato) to celebrate Gay Pride season. Even my gay friends thought that was nuts.

Ultimately, I think the final straw for me came when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for the word mankind to be outlawed because it was sexist. There, right there, was the purest, maddest example of the world going completely stark raving bonkers, and it came from one of the most powerful men, sorry persons, on Planet Earth. (Wait until Trudeau finds out the word man appears in the word woman )

So yes, the world had gone nuts. It had become a place where common sense was ignored, weakness celebrated, strength denigrated, failure replaced by participation prizes, accountability abandoned in the rush to blame others, dissenting views instantly crushed by a howling self-righteous mob and signalling ones dubious virtue was absolutely paramount. Why had the world gone this way? Who was causing this nonsense?

The answer is even more shocking than our inexorable descent into the abysmal PC-crazed abyss. For its us liberals who are responsible. By us, I mean that I consider myself a liberal and its my fellow liberals who have been driving this frantically illiberal assault on the very things were supposed to stand for: freedom and tolerance.

This extraordinary state of affairs prompts the question, What is a liberal? To which the answer is its very hard to say anymore. Technically, the word liberal is derived from the Latin words liber (meaning free, and also the root of liberty, meaning the quality or state of being free) and liberalis (meaning courteous, generous, gentlemanly).

The definitions of a liberal include one who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional or established forms or ways, a person who is willing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from ones own, favourable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms, and concerned with broadening general knowledge and experience.

Liberals believe that society should change gradually so that money, property and power are shared more equally. Above all, liberals are supposed to be tolerant. Yet here they are, screaming, shrieking, hollering and hectoring us all into a world of staggering intolerance and attempting to inhibit or silence our freedom of speech, particularly on our most pertinent societal issues.

HOW has this happened?

WHY has this happened?

WHAT will stop it?

When I first began writing this book in late 2019, I assumed it would lead to me being publicly cancelled the moment it was published. Id be shamed, vilified, mocked, abused, bullied and no-platformed. My book signings would be met with protests, possibly even threats of violence, and my media appearances to promote the book would be weirdly contentious. In fact, even the announcement I was writing a book on liberalism would be the catalyst for an immediate outpouring of liberal rage on social media and accusations that I was just another middle-aged white conservative bad guy many would refuse to believe I could possibly be a fellow liberal trying to stop good people (like them) calling me out for my nasty, bigoted (in their eyes) opinions.

This, after all, had been happening to anyone who dared to challenge the woke world view. Woke is a word that modern liberals proudly use to justify their illiberalism only they are awake enough to see how the world should be, while the rest of us imbeciles are too sleepily stupid to understand.

As with so many things hijacked and abused by modern illiberal society, the term was first used with the very best of intentions in political ads supporting Abraham Lincoln during the 1860 presidential election. The Wide Awakes movement was spawned by young Republicans to oppose the spread of slavery.

Being woke burst into modern popular culture in a 1962 New York Times essay written by William Melvin Kelley entitled If Youre Woke You Dig It, and in Erykah Badus 2008 song Master Teacher in which the soul singer repeats the phrase, I stay woke.

It was supposed to indicate someone having a sharp political awareness of systemic social and racial injustices, which is an entirely admirable trait. But in recent years, being woke has come to mean having an intransigent intolerance of myriad, often very trivial and pointless things, and the broadness of the woke charge sheet is growingly absurdly long and often utterly ridiculous.