[Leaving the Left](http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/22/INGUNCQHKJ1.DTL)
> I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives — people who once championed solidarity
> Keith Thompson
> Sunday, May 22, 2005
> … I look back on that experience as the beginning of my departure from a left already well on its way to losing its bearings. Two decades later, I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.
> Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics.
> Susan Sontag cleared her throat for the “courage” of the al Qaeda pilots. Norman Mailer pronounced the dead of Sept. 11 comparable to “automobile statistics.” The events of that day were likely premeditated by the White House, Gore Vidal insinuated. Noam Chomsky insisted that al Qaeda at its most atrocious generated no terror greater than American foreign policy on a mediocre day. …
> … My larger point is rather simple. Just as a body needs different medicines at different times for different reasons, this also holds for the body politic.
> In the sixties, America correctly focused on bringing down walls that prevented equal access and due process. It was time to walk the Founders’ talk — and we did. With barriers to opportunity no longer written into law, today the body politic is crying for different remedies.
> America must now focus on creating healthy, self-actualizing individuals committed to taking responsibility for their lives, developing their talents, honing their skills and intellects, fostering emotional and moral intelligence, all in all contributing to the advancement of the human condition. …
> … Leftists who no longer speak of the duties of citizens, but only of the rights of clients, cannot be expected to grasp the importance (not least to our survival) of fostering in the Middle East the crucial developmental advances that gave rise to our own capacity for pluralism, self-reflection, and equality. A left averse to making common cause with competent, self- determining individuals — people who guide their lives on the basis of received values, everyday moral understandings, traditional wisdom, and plain common sense — is a faction that deserves the marginalization it has pursued with such tenacity for so many years.
Wow, it’s interesting to see Mr. Thompson’s epiphany out loud. It certainly does lead credence to the title of Michael Savage’s *Liberalism is a Mental Disorder* where many of the more vocal liberals/progressives/leftists/whatever seem to rejoice at every death of any American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan and at every difficulty that befalls the Bush administration.
In listening to the rhetoric I find the left to be bereft of original thought on solving today’s problems and acerbic in their attack of any conservative solution without offering any viable solution of their own.