The late Umberto Eco once famously wrote: "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots."

That might be true about those who express opinions we disagree with. We think of them as idiots. Whereas some of them are, there are also others who decidedly are not. Facebook, for instance, gives the opportunity to encounter idiots as well as intelligent people.

One member belonging to the latter category, a Scotsman I "met" through Michael Briguglio's Facebook account.

W. Elliot Bulmer holds a PhD in politics from Glasgow and has had at least one of his books published by Edinburgh University Press. He recently posted on Facebook that decent working people need a political force that "focuses on specific, tangible gains for working people, explains how they benefit society as a whole, and does so within a moral framework that can also resonate with conservatives".

This political force, he argued, "needs to move away from the countercultural radicalism and identity politics of the 1960s, and start to engage with the needs, values, hopes and fears of ordinary working people in clear, practical ways. The policies of [this political force] should [appeal] to decent, solid traditional families who want to live in peace, security, dignity and moderate prosperity." He defined working people as "those who wear ties as much as those who wear overalls, those with post-grad degrees as well as those with callused hands".

To me, this makes a lot of sense. Having expressed a similar idea in the introduction to the series of conversations with former Chief Justice Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici in a book called Il-Liġi, il-Morali, u r-Raġuni published in 2008, I found in this brilliant Scotsman a kindred spirit.

Apart from Michael Briguglio and Bulmer, I happen to have another friend in common, Adrian Pabst. Adrian writes indefatigably for The Guardian, among others, putting forward ideas in this same vein. Tellingly, Pabst and Bulmer are interested not only in work, family, and country, but also in matters of faith. Bulmer approves of the Reformation's insistence on individual conscience yet questions whether, all in all, it was not an avoidable mistake. Pabst, on the other hand, though having an intimate and enviable knowledge of Orthodoxy, expresses favourable opinions about Roman Catholicism and, like all intelligent people, applauded Pope Ratzinger on quite a few occasions.

In 2009, he wrote: "The Pope seeks to chart a Catholic 'third way' that combines strict limits on state and market with a civil economy centred on mutualist businesses, cooperatives, credit unions and other alternative models. By calling for an economic system re-embedded in civil society, Benedict advocates a political economy that transcends the old secular dichotomies of state v market and left v right."

Pabst honoured me when he Okayed my publishing of another short essay of his in my book on the Panama Papers scandals which hit bookstore shelves last year.

While these currents are gaining momentum in the United Kingdom, Diego Fusaro is promoting a similar analysis in Italy. A former lecturer at Milan's San Raffaele University, Fusaro is a well-known TV personality whose book on a new, communitarian approach to Marx was an unexpected best-seller in Italy, selling more than 90,000 copies and receiving plaudits even from FIAT factory workers.

In a very recent article, Fusaro wrote: "Following God's demise, we didn't witness the rise of the Übermensch ('superman') of Nietzsche's prophecy, but the rise of the consumer who lacks identity and depth. Unlike the mature man who can say no, this consumer must remain an immature adolescent throughout his life, a perpetual prey to his whims ... Unlike the middle-class mature man ... the post-bourgeois and ultra-capitalist eternal youth lives the eternal present moment of perpetual adolescence focusing on simple enjoyment bereft of prospects and long-term projects. He never postpones the idea that 'life is now'. Life is no longer lived as a project of stabilisation of its forms", but as a "maximisation of the present moment without any prospects for the future".

If it sounds complicated in English, you should read the original in Italian which I had to translate here! Yet, despite the German-sounding complexity, the thought is crystal-clear. The historical bracket we happen to be living in - our present - insists on keeping consumers living in eternal adolescence in order to achieve the banal objective of maximising sales. Everything is reduced to merchandise - not just manufactured products, but also "controversial" services.

To my mind, Fusaro, who is another friend of mine, nailed it.

Like Bulmer and Pabst, Fusaro cherishes a strong belief in the redeeming nature of Christianity. He recently wrote - again on Facebook - that "Christian values do not belong to the Right. Europe's entire civilisation is based on Christianity".

All this evokes the memory of an observation my father once shared with me, when we were alone in the small room in which he wrote during the last years of his life. A man, he told me with that voice of his coloured by authority and warmth, achieves maturity only when he becomes a real Christian. He was obviously quoting Ephesians, but he didn't tell me, and I only discovered it years after his death.

So it transpires that all of these thinkers (be they right-wingers, Marxists, moderate leftists or what have you) are - wittingly or unwittingly - quoting Ephesians 4:13-15. "Then we will no longer be immature like children. We will not be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth."

One such "truth" is that it is all a matter of "love", that the "power of love" can overcome all discrimination and bring about liberty and equality. But it is quite obvious, I think, that "love" - almost an ideological synonym of the French Revolution's "fraternity" - is never properly defined. It usually alludes to simple and childish love of self. Almost always, the word "love" is used in creative ways, a bit like the kiss. It can convey love, but it can also be used to betray a friend to his enemies.