Much of what passed for social commentary was "suffocating dishonesty and self-loathing", Minister for Justice Michael McDowell claimed yesterday while addressing the MacGill Summer School.
He said there was a strong element of an Orwellian "left good, right bad" theme to much of what was to be read and heard in some quarters of the media.
"This is hardly surprising, since what is 'left' is heavily sanitised and what is 'right' is heavily caricatured to fit that mindset," he added. "Those opposed to the 'left agenda' are, by definition, 'right'.
"The 'left' is never reactionary; the 'right' always is. Holding on to the 'left' positions is never 'conservative', challenging them always is."
Mr McDowell said that self-questioning and self-doubt were necessary actors on the social stage. But he did have a problem with self-loathing masquerading as moral superiority.
"I also have a problem with intellectual self-indulgence posing as serious social commentary. I have a problem, too, with the internal anger of those who suffer from middle-class self-loathing being directed against everyone who questions the moral orthodoxy of the politically correct self-appointed lay hierarchy who direct modern Ireland's moral inquisition."
Mr McDowell said many dogmas failed to be enforced by Ireland's "moral inquisition", including the doctrine that low tax rates were inherently wrong.
"This 'error' is ruthlessly challenged and eradicated by those inquisitors of the true faith who 'know' that the more 'progressive' tax rates are in the technical sense, the more 'progressive' they must be in the political sense as well," he added. "To them it is heresy to suggest that the high yield of low tax rates may be more socially just than the low yield of high tax rates."
He remembered being taken to task by one "inquisitor" for describing the then existing tax regime, which took more than 60 per cent of marginal earnings of single workers earning below the average industrial wage, as "confiscatory".
His first "error" had been to question the moral right of the State to set such tax rates as it thought fit and his second "error" was to imply that such workers might have moral first call on their own earnings. Another "inquisitor" had memorably described the decision to halve capital gains tax from 40 per cent to 20 per cent as a "fiscal obscenity", even though that raised annual yield five-fold.
"The low rate of corporation tax, which also yields multiples of what it used to yield, is likewise morally impermissible, doctrinally erroneous and politically heretical," the Minister added.
Mr McDowell criticised the "Irish social moralists who claim to speak with moral authority on economic questions but resolutely refuse to dirty their hands intellectually with base and profane issues such as incentive, enterprise . . . or growth.
"The factors that create prosperity, and differentiate between the successful, or sluggish or failing economies, are simply beneath their moral radar and intellectual gaze, and are far too tedious and distasteful to warrant their study or understanding."