This is what a Good Person Looks Like

Perhaps, like the feared Committee of Public Safety in revolutionary France, the modern liberal sensibility - as embodied, say, in much of the BBC and very definitely in Channel 4 News - has taken upon itself, the prescribing of what a standard and acceptable good person looks like. It is not entirely clear on what authority they have taken this burden on themselves but taken it they have.
According to this prescription the ‘good person’ will exhibit the right emotional credentials in terms of baring his/her heart at times deemed to be appropriate, and shed tears on demand. They will have the correct attitudes, with no latitude for divergence from them, on a number of issues. They will care about and champion the rights of a menu of people previously laid down to be those considered in need of succour.
This prescription is erected into a kind of inviolable religious orthodoxy against which it is possible to sin and be deemed a heretic. Let’s thank our lucky stars that the punishment for demurring is only general social opprobrium and vilification rather than the guillotine. Once we have obediently adhered to the prescription laid down, however, we can view any moral calamity with impunity and a confidence that we are utterly free from moral contamination. For, outside this code, there can’t be any sins can there?