[Noumenon]

Walzer writes; "Can there be a decent left in a superpower?" Walzer thinks there can, but only if the Left jettisons most of its frivolous intellectual contrivances and emotional extravagances.

Then it will collapse into a pile of dust, because there is nothing else holding it up.

[Shermy]

True, and it's all about an oppositional identity. For them, the people of the USA failed to adulate their pose of higher moral superiority. So they turned to the third world, borrowing the old and parternalistic noble savage paradigm. Third world suffering, at least as so far it could somehow be fitted to have been "caused" by America, was the new guilt object for the left, their understanding of these sufferers waived at us like they've found God. Essentially, a narcissism masked in charity.

Now they are confronted with Osama, rich terrorists, and thrid world people who hate their values more than they hate those of western conservatives. The left is in a funk because they cannot define the Islamist crisis into a rational anti-American construct, and then proclaim their special understanding of it. They tried, some early gasps being the September/October "root causes" arguments, meaning what they would hope the root causes would be. Osama's later videos stumped them.

Simply, they have nothing worthwhile to say, and since they cannot claim a special knowledge of foreign affairs anymore since the same are widely discussed now among all elements of the public. Additionally, they have nothing to say about religion, which makes them unable to address religion as a cause of political and military crises. Finally, since many lived in the New York kill zone target of the terrorists, they've shut up or changed their tune, or at least opened their minds.

Their are still some bleats. My favorite one is the repetitive "I'm being censored" when they mean "I'm being criticized." They haven't felt what they have been practicing against others - it's dumbfounding to them.