A COLUMN DEVOTED to explaining a buzz phrase of the moment will find rich seams of material in political commentary. At its best, political writing offers arresting metaphor and acute diagnosis. More commonly, political columnists, mindful that few people share their interest in the subject, obscure the ephemeral character of their output with extravagant exclamations about its significance.

The Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley provided an example this week when she complained: “It looks as if conservative Americans have made a fetish of a few isolated issues while ignoring far harder and more painful questions.” Heroically overlooking the double entendre that was sure to occur to more frivolous readers, the newspaper headlined the piece: “We must reclaim morality from reactionary fetishists.”

The reactionary fetishists identified by Ms Ashley are those absorbed, appropriately enough, with sexual ethics. The enlightened are those who subscribe instead to the catechism of foreign-policy and environmental views to be found in — to take a random example of enlightened opinion — the comment pages of The Guardian. Ms Ashley dislikes the first group, while exhorting the second to congratulate themselves on their broadmindedness and seek an explanation for their unpopularity in their opponents’ underhandedness.

She complains: “Nothing has been more damaging to the Left than the smear that everyone who supports, say redistribution of wealth, is also by definition keen on compulsory adultery, the decriminalisation of all drugs and free access for armed burglars to pensioners’ homes. (If you think (this) exaggerates, think again: that is a reasonable précis of what they say about us.)”

As it happens, I am with Ms Ashley on the fetishes, and on redistribution too. No Guardian columnist’s heart bleeds more freely than mine in sympathy with liberal views on abortion, capital punishment and gay rights. But these are political opinions, not axioms. Ms Ashley’s depiction of her opponents does not even reach the level of caricature — which would at least contain a core of truth embellished by hyperbole. If there is somewhere a fully developed version of the argument she claims to have reliably summarised, she does not reveal its source. It is enough to propound it as a Manichaean counterweight to her own professions of — no, really — “a sense of proportion, fairness and civic-mindedness”.

The fact that religious observance is far higher in the US than in Europe does not make America intolerant. Incomprehension of American opinion — for which “reactionary fetishism” may now serve as a useful shorthand — is a failing that liberals ought to try dispelling rather than exemplifying.