Ping for the ASPL.

But cynicism and alienation do not make for a coherent liberal critique of the current administration or the war. And American democracy — and the world — is poorer for lack of that debate.

Dialectics is not a good in itself, Andrew. Sometimes right and wrong are as simple as, well, right and wrong.

The need to rebel is something most of us have felt at one or more points in our lives.

I personally rebelled against liberalism. Still am.

Wow. Sullivan has a great way with words. He is of course right. The best that the left can produce right now are bottom-of-the-barrel, uncomprehendably bitter morons like Michael Moore.

give Donald Rumsfeld the political version of Viagra.

Andrew, there is so much to agree with in this article. But I'm tellin' you here and now. Rummy doesn't need Viagra ~political or otherwise! VaVaVaVooooooom! :o) fsf

But cynicism and alienation do not make for a coherent liberal critique of the current administration or the war. And American democracy — and the world — is poorer for lack of that debate.

I'm sure that if Andrew really wants to see the debate, he's bright enough to come up with some arguments for the liberal side. If he wants to.

He describes Bill Clinton as one of the most successful Republican . . .

There is a kernel of truth in that if you consider Bubba's policies and those promoted by the dominating wing of the RINO Party. That said, I still wonder how such idiocy as Moore's book makes it to the top of the bestseller list. Who buys this garbage?

Over-written (as usual), but still good stuff.

As usual.

ALWAYS worth the read.

We haven't seen anything in a while from the always incisive Paglia. But at least Sullivan is still writing.

“The truth is,” Walzer writes, “the guilt produced by living in such a country and enjoying its privileges makes it impossible to sustain a decent (intelligent, responsible, morally nuanced) politics. Maybe festering resentment, ingrown anger and self-hate are the inevitable result of the long years spent in fruitless opposition to the global reach of American power. Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left’s reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally got what it deserved.”

Or, as my father used to say, "The liberal's reward is self-disgust"

f**k the lefties!!

Michael Moore is a Big Fat Idiot. Wish Al Franken would write THAT book.

Does Moore ride in a Lincoln or Caddy limo? Or does he have a team of Clydesdale's to pull his bloated ass around?

Poor limos.

There is also barely a mention in Moore's book about the current war on terrorism. You can understand why. It raises questions the left simply doesn't want to answer. Was the American intervention in Afghanistan, which many leftists opposed, a liberating mission after all? How can leftists bemoan the removal of an oppressive, sexist, homophobic tyranny? But how at the same time could they support a war conducted by a president inimical to their beliefs and interests? On the opposite side of the spectrum between reason and unreason, the eminent liberal political theorist Michael Walzer has just written an essay worrying about exactly this kind of leftist surrealism. Unlike Moore, he's less concerned with a form of purist performance art than how the left can actually change America, if it hates her so.

"The truth is," Walzer writes, "the guilt produced by living in such a country and enjoying its privileges makes it impossible to sustain a decent (intelligent, responsible, morally nuanced) politics. Maybe festering resentment, ingrown anger and self-hate are the inevitable result of the long years spent in fruitless opposition to the global reach of American power. Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left's reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally got what it deserved."

This anti-American nihilism is exactly what some parts of the left sought refuge in as terrorists killed thousands of their fellow citizens. In one gesture, such leftists both showed how far gone they were and also how unhinged from most Americans they had become.

Walzer sees the deeper problem as an inheritance from the new left of the 1960s, a left that still cannot see religious motives for terror, for example, preferring to view Islamofascism with some kind of Marxist subtext, to the point of misreading the nature of the terrorist threat altogether. And he sees the endless legacy of defeat for the American left as a debilitatingly alienating experience: "Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as a surrender to jingoism. That's why they had such difficulty responding emotionally to the attacks of September 11 or joining in the expressions of solidarity that followed."

Andrew Sullivan: America's left surrenders itself to the giant sulk
The Sunday Times (U.K.)

Why was the World Trade Center destroyed by kamikaze-style Islamic terrorist airline hijackers?

Why did 5,000 American perish Sept. 11?

Why was the Pentagon attacked?

To hear former President Bill Clinton explain it, the United States of America is "paying a price today" for its past sins of slavery and for looking "the other way when a significant number of native Americans were dispossessed and killed."

That's what he told 1,000 students at Georgetown University Wednesday evening, according to news reports.

"This country once looked the other way when a significant number of native Americans were dispossessed and killed to get their land or their mineral rights or because they were thought of as less than fully human," Clinton said. "And we're still paying the price today."

Clinton blames America

IT IS OBVIOUS

By Mia T, 3-3-02

It is obvious to anyone who bothers to remove his political blinders. It is so patently obvious that even those whose political blinders are a permanently fixed fashion statement -- that is to say, even Hollywood -- can see it. (Just ask Whoopie Goldberg...) Bush's poll numbers are a reflection of this self-evident truth.

What is manifestly obvious and confirmed on a daily basis is the plain fact that Democrats are, by definition, constitutionally unfit to navigate the ship of state through these troubled, terrorist waters. Democrats were unfit pre-9/11, but few could see it then. It was 9/11 and its aftermath that made this truth crystal clear even to the most simpleminded among us.

The unwashed masses, the uninformed, the disinformed can see it now. All America can see it now. Self-preservation is kicking in, trumping petty politics at every turn.

And this is why Democrat demagoguery and stupidity and sedition are achieving new lows...

We are witnessing the last gasp of a political relic. The Democrat party is not merely obsolete. As 9/11 and clinton-clinton-Daschle action and inaction have demonstrated, the Democrat party is very dangerous.

We must now make sure that this fact, too, is obvious to all...

That Joe Klein still thinks he can, post-9/11, credibly argue that clinton ran "a serious, disciplined, responsible presidency" is testament to leftist self-delusion, indeed, to the left's utter unfitness to govern.

JOE KLEIN STRIKES OUT. . . AGAIN