What’s Right: Low, Dishonest ♦♦♦

Radicals who came of age in the 1990s were truly rebels without a cause. Socialism was gone and so was the nuclear arms race; and the causes that remained lacked—well—a certain oomph. Who could get excited about the campaign to deny Third World farmers cheap and productive genetically modified seeds? Things got so bad that my fellow Torontonian Naomi Klein was acclaimed as the “Pasionara” of the Newest Left on the strength of a book that argued that consumers should avoid products that displayed their makers’ labels—a remarkable fusion of the principles of international socialism and those of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves.

But the long years of dearth have now ended. The war on terror has provided the hard Left with its biggest cause yet—and some exciting new allies.

DF

About the Author

David Frum

Radicals who came of age in the 1990s were truly rebels without a cause. Socialism was gone and so was the nuclear arms race; and the causes that remained lacked—well—a certain oomph. Who could get excited about the campaign to deny Third World farmers cheap and productive genetically modified seeds? Things got so bad that my fellow Torontonian Naomi Klein was acclaimed as the “Pasionara” of the Newest Left on the strength of a book that argued that consumers should avoid products that displayed their makers’ labels—a remarkable fusion of the principles of international socialism and those of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves.

But the long years of dearth have now ended. The war on terror has provided the hard Left with its biggest cause yet—and some exciting new allies.