[lit-ideas] How Liberals Lost their Way.

I found reference to another Liberal who is questioning the abandonment of 
Liberal principles in a rush toward the Left: Nick Cohen and his book What's 
Left?  How Liberals Lost their Way.   Here is an Amazon.com review: 

Lawrence [the review of the book follows]

In this fascinating book, Cohen tries to find answers to why the world is 
upside down, why liberals and leftists are nowadays more likely than 
conservatives to excuse fascist movements and governments. With the exception 
of their native western far-right parties, they embrace all foreign oppressive 
governments as long as these oppose the West. The author argues that the death 
of communism has brought a dark liberation to those who consider themselves on 
the left; they are now free to champion any totalitarian group that is 
anti-western and anti-American. This mindset is particularly prevalent amongst 
the intellectuals and the mass media, as also documented in Can We Trust the 
BBC? by Robin Aitken. 

Third world democrats, feminists and liberals have been betrayed by those who 
so style themselves in the West. The fall of communism and the disappearance of 
a coherent set of principles have liberated Western leftists into a kind of 
nihilism that is akin to modern consumerism. Now you can pick your issue du 
jour from an anti-Western smorgasbord. Cohen chronicles the etiology of the 
disease - how it started with postmodern theorists and obscure fringe groups, 
entered the mainstream and led to the failure of left-liberals to confront 
genocide in Bosnia, Kosovo and the Middle East until it grew into an 
all-consuming fever. He also attempts to salvage the best of the liberal-left's 
internationalist and democratic traditions. In this regard, please consult A 
Matter of Principle edited by Thomas Cushman. 

The author chronicles these developments in part by telling the story of Iraqi 
human rights campaigner Kanan Makiya who exposed Saddam's atrocities in the 
book Republic of Fear and was later shunned by his former so-called comrades. 
Makiya was prescient as he foresaw the outcome of these relativist multiculti 
tendencies in his 1993 book Cruelty and Silence. Many myths and lies are 
exposed by Cohen, for example those concerning Saddam's arms suppliers. For the 
record, between 1973 and 2002, 57 per cent of those weapons came from the 
Soviet Union/Russia, 13 per cent from France and 12 per cent from China. The 
USA and UK together did not contribute even one per cent. 

Other revelations concern sinister British groups on the left, like the Workers 
Revolutionary Party of the thug Gerry Healy, a toxic cult if ever there was 
one. Some of the juiciest writing is about the obscurantism of postmodern 
theorists - it makes you laugh out loud. The Sokal Hoax is inter alia covered 
here, but the very best dissection of this species may be found in Explaining 
Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen 
Hicks. 

Cohen observes that the utopian, the hate-filled and the irreconcileable do not 
dissappear with geopolitical changes, so a revived radicalism was inevitable 
after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the death of communism gave birth to a 
nasty nihilism, the breast milk of the Moonbats. Not surprising since one of 
their intellectual masters, Michel Foucault, already hailed the Khomeinian 
ayatollocracy back in 1978. Thus his intellectual heirs ended up endorsing 
anything that was against liberal democracy. 

The author examines these disturbing trends against the history of the 1930s, 
the infamous Hitler-Stalin pact and the disgraceful behaviour of some Tories 
and Leftists at the time. The book provides too much evidence to discuss in one 
review, but Cohen's analysis of characters like George Galloway and the 
Hezbollah shill Noam Chomsky is superb. Further information on the sinister 
marriage of leftism and fascism is available in Unholy Alliance by David 
Horowitz. 

The book provides a vivid picture of people so deluded, they have completely 
abandoned the values that once formed part of the democratic mainstream and 
swopped them for a nihilistic culture steeped in hedonism and ignorance. That 
is why they embrace or excuse losers, demagogues and dictators like Mugabe and 
Chavez. It is not a large leap from marching in support of homicidal terrorists 
and sadistic Islamist and Baathist regimes to nurturing the loathsome 
antisemitism which motivates the moral inversion that they need in order to 
appear the champion of the victim. The eerily erotic quality of the expressions 
of their hatred has been well documented by writers like Christopher Hitchens 
and Julie Burchill. 

These faux liberals desperately need to have faith of some sort, no matter how 
evil or psychotic, to persuade themselves that their paranoia about an American 
"theocracy" or a "Zionist conspiracy" is valid. They cling to their conspiracy 
theories so fervently that it is impossible for verifiable facts or reality to 
penetrate the bell jar of lunacy. Their delusions shield them from the 
implications of the abject failure of their murderous ideology that has brought 
misery and death to millions. 

The intensity of their projection derives from the need to believe that the 
latest manifestation of their bankrupt collectivist ideology, properly called 
"transnational progressivism" stands for peace and that the 
Neocons/Christians/Zionists/Capitalism cause all the world's evil rather than 
their own utopian grotesqueries. The paranoia and projection of the PoMo 
liberals and leftists and their newfound friends amongst the wingnut paleocons 
like Pat Buchanan and "libertarians" like Lew Rockwell anaesthetize the pain 
and make them feel good about themselves. 

In their chosen role as the victims of America and Israel, these pampered 
elites congratulate themselves on their "courageous" and "principled" stand 
against "Western hegemony." They are thus not to blame for the terrifying 
emptiness within and the encroaching darkness of terrorism out there. Without 
Bush, the world would be a paradise. Externalizing the blame for their own 
unease is essential in order to deny the facts and banish the gnawing of 
reality. Without their projection - The Perpetual Banishing Ritual of the 
Progressive Sinisterist - there is nothing left.

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