John Podhoretz nails it today in the New York Post, where he argues that the left doesn’t believe in anything overseas anymore besides despair. Paul Johnson made a related point in a piece for us a while ago–that the left’s new faith, now that socialism has died, is pessimism. I’m struck by this when I’m on college campuses. I want to say to these kids (and professors), “OK, you think Bush’s foreign policy is a disaster, but what do you believe, what’s the alternative, what’s your vision?” There is none. These people believe in nothing. They aren’t even soft-headed idealists anymore because Bush’s idealistic rhetoric has prompted them to reject idealism. All they have is a smug faith in American failure, that whatever we do–literally whatever we do: whether its militaristic or altruistic or something in between–is wrong and doomed to fail.
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