"THEY are like mules," a particularly cool bishop remarked the other day of progressives in the Catholic church. "They have no heirs." Might this also be true of the deconstructionist Left in politics, with its conceivably sui generis progenitors traceable only back to the counter-cultural sixties and seventies? There's an argument to be made. The re-election of George Bush, an unequivocally combative conservative, and the return of John Howard for a fourth term, suggests climate change in American and Australian politics rather than seasonal variation. After fighting Bush with dedicated unscrupulousness throughout the presidential campaign, The New York Times tacitly...