Leftists are zombies, incapable of being killed.  Every time you think they're finished - such as when the murderous evil dogma of communism was defeated in Europe 20 years ago -

After learning that the left-leaning think-tank Demos has set up The Progressive Conservatism Project (led by three individuals with the most delightfully Dickensian names - Jonty Olliff-Cooper, Max Wind-Cowie and Will Shortt (sic)), today ConHome carries a piece from another left-of-centre think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research.

In his searing tome, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, Jonah Goldberg argues that modern liberalism and fascism both descended from progressivism and that prior to the Second World War "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States".

Progressivism is diametrically opposed to everything that conservatives believe in. The notion that we, as conservatives, ought to want to deliver progressive ends by conservative methods smacks of the politics of appeasement and accommodation that neutered Britain politically, economically and socially between 1945 and 1979.

I am not an egalitarian. I am not a statist. I am not a progressive. I am a conservative.

I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. I believe in God-given or natural, fundamental freedoms inherent in my being a free-born Englishman: I do not have rights "given" to me by the state (or indeed the EU). I believe in the rule of law, and in equality before the law. As PJ O'Rourke said: "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." Like Reagan, I believe that "government is not the solution to our problems but that government is the problem". I do not believe that technocrats, bureaucrats or well-meaning politicians can create a utopia - indeed I believe that the less our lives are interfered with, the better.

PJ O'Rourke once said that "giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys". Ronald Reagan similarly observed: "The Government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other".

Have we truly lost our way as libertarians and conservatives that we are unwilling to pay heed to those who came before us? Or have we forgotten what they said to us or simply never learned?

Edmund Burke observed that "the true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients". It may well be true, as Thomas Jefferson said, that "timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty" but as was also once said "when the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence".

"Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end" remarked Lord Acton (the man who, of course, gave us the phrase "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"). If anything, at a time when the state is encroaching more and more on our freedoms, conservatives should be dedicating themselves anew to defending liberty, not enacting the "progressive" agenda of those who despise all we believe in.

Barry Goldwater reminded us that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue". The great (and superbly named) American judge, Billings Learned Hand, warned us that "liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it".

Milton Friedman said it best when he observed:

So can we cut this "progressive conservatism" nonsense and simply, as conservatives, defend and advance the cause of liberty? The next time a self-styled "progressive" tells you that something is necessary, let's hope that the shadow cabinet remember William Pitt's admonition: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

For, like Jefferson, should we not declare:

while, parodying John F Kennedy, asking not what you can do for your country but ask what your government is doing to you. One satirist once wrote: "The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk."" How true and yet how sad that it is true still today.

I end, for the first time, with a quote from Karl Marx that should send shivers down the spine of every true conservative:

Too many conservatives have been cut off from their history. They have been easily persuaded by those who loathe liberty. Those of us who love liberty must reconnect those people with their history before it is too late.