It’s hard to see what Dyson Heydon, Mark Latham and anal sex have in common, yet these are the three dominating political and cultural topics of the last seven days. Are they merely random, disconnected stories or do they point to something more disturbing in the Australian body politic?

Scarily, they are not two but three sides of the same coin: the Left’s determination to humiliate and denigrate opponents in order to silence them.

The prolonged media attack on Dyson Heydon QC is a textbook example of how to create a cyclonic media maelstrom in a china thimble. The Royal Commissioner’s original sin, such as it was, was to pull out of a political function he had already given his acceptance to. That in and of itself was the logical, correct and appropriate conclusion of his ethical and legal conundrum. Everything beyond that decision has involved hysterical hyperbole and disingenuous second-guessing. By having deliberately whipped up a perception of bias, the union-dominated Labor party now complain of a ‘perception of bias’. Ta-dah!

In the Tom Cruise film Minority Report, law enforcers act on whether such and such a crime might be committed by such and such an individual. The ALP attack on the Royal Commissioner’s credibility similarly relies on a clairvoyant’s knowledge of the presumed content of his never-delivered speech and a psychic’s reading of his political leanings. It is enough for the modern Left that Mr Heydon had even contemplated attending an event connected to the Liberal party. Not since McCarthyism have we seen such unblinking condemnation of a person’s motives and loyalties courtesy of whom they may have happened to have considered briefly having a chat with. The ‘thought police’ are alive and well in Australia today.

Our former columnist Mark Latham and Dyson Heydon make for unusual bedfellows, but both share the honour of being relentlessly hounded in order to protect Leftist dogma. Mr Latham is a talented writer, whose columns can be insightful, illuminating, deeply personal and confronting. Indeed, his last column for this magazine was not published at the discretion of the editor; a decision Mr Latham was perfectly entitled to object to by declining to continue our relationship. But refusing to publish a specific few words or paragraphs is not the same as attempting to silence an opinionated individual by demonising him or her – to wit, the effort to silence Mr Latham’s repeated criticisms of certain elitist feminists by demeaning him personally.

Which brings us unavoidably to anal sex, or rather, the accusatory tweet put to air by the ABC. If ever the public needed reminding of the raw, animalistic and barbaric hatred with which the Left views our Prime Minister, this was it. Most of us nowadays are – almost – inured to the tedious ‘F—k Abbott’ teeshirts and such like that appear ubiquitously at Left/Green rallies, but this tweet was a new low for an institution as important as the ABC. It is little wonder that the Prime Minister treats such (publicly funded) broadcasting with disdain, but the real tragedy is the total silence from the chattering classes who, by failing to condemn such disgusting behaviour, inevitably condone it. The contrast with the confected outrage over the (relatively benign) ‘Ditch the Witch’ slogan is striking. We await with bated breath for Tanya Plibersek or another of Ms Gillard’s fans to leap to their feet in Question Time to ‘call out’ the ABC for ‘misandry’, ‘sexism’ or perhaps even ‘analphobia’ for having broadcast the vile tweet.

The constant denigration of Mr Abbott by the ABC (much of the recent Q&A was devoted to a pointless debate about whether the Prime Minister was ’Lost’, conjuring up images of him wandering aimlessly around the jungle after a plane crash), by our universities and by the sneering columnists of the Age and Sydney Morning Herald is not only infantile, it is perverse. As James Allan points out in this issue, it’s not as if this government is even remotely ‘ravingly right wing’.

The Left are determined to harass critics into total silence. Those who find such bullying unacceptable must not be afraid to raise their own voices.

RuddTV

With great delight we learn that former PM Kevin Rudd is to turn his hand to hosting a show on CNN. Mr Rudd, much like his ex-colleagues Senator Sam Dastyari and Tony Burke MP, is a natural for the small screen. Indeed, the three of them turned in stellar performances in the ABC’s recent psycho-thriller The Killing Season. Fiction and fantasy were always Mr Rudd’s areas of expertise, so it will be interesting to see how he copes with reality TV.