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Tempting as it is to simply turn away, it is important for democrats to understand the pro-tyrant left. It is vastly influential on campuses and its ideas are trickling down into the wider culture. In the short twentieth century, the rise of Stalinism, a reactionary but non-capitalist social system, disorientated the left -- bar some fragments -- more or less completely.

There was a slow scouring out of the habits of mind, the sensibilities and the values of an older left-wing culture that had been rooted in the Enlightenment, the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century, and the ethical socialism of the mass European labor movements. In its place was put power-worship, authoritarianism, and a cult of the transformative power of revolutionary violence.

Crucially, in the 1960s and 1970s, while the New Left innovated in the realm of culture and personal relations, when it came to geopolitics it mostly fell into line as cheerleader or apologist for one authoritarian “progressive” after another. As this New Left aged and drifted to the faculties and publishing houses it declared itself to be anti-anti-communist. In practice, it blamed America first.

After the collapse of its global alternative to liberal capitalism, the pro-tyrant left simply refused to rethink. Rather than give up either its Manichean view of a world composed of two camps of progress and reaction, it recreated both by substituting an implacable negativism, centred on a conception of America as the “Great Satan,” in the place of what had been a coherent (if wrong-headed and tyrannical) program for social reconstruction.

After 1989, and especially after 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the old idea that Stalinism (its crimes notwithstanding) was objectively progressive against the West, morphed into the idea that all opposition to "US imperialism" or "Empire" was a "resistance" or "multitude" that must be (its crimes notwithstanding) supported, or at least not opposed energetically.

This pro-tyrant left thinks it holds the key to the entire world in the palm of its hand. If America is opposed to a tyrant, then -- there is some dubious logic here, but this really is the crucial move -- the tyrant must be opposing America. And -- this is the last stretch, stay with me -- therefore the tyrant is an "anti-imperialist" and, objectively, "progressive."

These ideas have been adopted in softer forms throughout the culture. We see it in the refusal of emotional commitment to the West in its battles against dictators and terrorists, the refusal to credit the West with anything but malign intent, the tendency to blame ourselves when we are attacked, and the pathological refusal to see plain the nature of forces such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

It certainly feels uncomfortable to watch American, British, and French planes enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya, bombing Libya’s anti-aircraft defences, and destroying Libyan tanks. Certainly the hypocrisy of the West and the Arab dictators is as galling as ever. The fact is that the Libyans have not had the leisure to discuss politics and choose good leaders -- their priority now is to get rid of the tyrant and to simply stay alive.

Many people are crippled in their judgement by ideology: leftists who think Gaddafi is an anti-imperialist hero, non-Arab soft Islamists who have a problem admitting the Arabs are connected to each other beyond the borders drawn by imperialists, Zionists who tell themselves the revolutions have nothing to do with Palestine, Americans who tell temselves that the invasion and destruction of Iraq started the democratic ball rolling.

It is the stupid fringes of the left who have the most to answer for at the moment, as they not only express logical concerns about the extent of Western intervention but actively support Gaddafi. They say the UN "aggression" is designed to ease Western access to Libyan oil, as if Western companies did not already exploit Libyan oil under Gaddafi’s regime. They talk about Gaddafi’s great "victories" against imperialism.

These leftists are ignorant of the stagnation of Arab societies under dictatorial regimes and of the enormous suffering of those imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. If they are not ignorant, they simply do not care. They are the kind of people who supported Soviet interventions in Eastern Europe in 1956 and 1968, who think the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was a liberation, and that Mao's cultural revolution was progressive.

These people are posers, for whom ideas and facts are useless except as adornments for the sexy self. They are an insult to leftism and anti-imperialism. Fortunately, their residence in fantasyland makes them entirely irrelevant to the real world.

Liberals have always served a vital function within American democracy, which is: they have provided channels and mechanisms within the power structure by which the grievances of citizens can be heard and addressed.

[Yet] those members of the establishment who identify themselves as liberals have walked out on the basic tenets, the core values of liberalism: a concern for the condition of citizens outside the narrow power elite, a fierce protection of civil liberties, a promotion of individualism and of rule of law.

The only thing that kept the liberal class honest was the radical Left. Once you destroyed and gutted the radical Left, the liberal class evolved into a class of courtiers, hedonists of power, people who speak in one way and act in another.

There were two reactions to the global crisis of the 1930s: one resulted in fascism and the other resulted in the New Deal. The reason we got the New Deal is because we had powerful radical social movements with broad social visions and the guts to stand up and fight back. Those movements -- with the complicity of the liberal class -- were destroyed.

The New Deal was the product of militant labour unions, including Communist union leaders, anarchists, the Wobblies, and a vigorous and independent press. Those social movements kept the liberal class honest.

When we saw the rise of globalism and the dismantling of the regulations (that had served as bulwarks not only to protect the marketplace but, ultimately, to protect democracy) lifted, the liberal class did not have the fortitude to fight back.

We are certainly headed for a similar social meltdown [as in the 1930s], but without the aid of those movements and led by a liberal class that is utterly bankrupt.

Dostoyevsky was obsessed with those [people] -- that is what Notes from Underground is about: it is about the defeated dreamer, it is about the person who went to all the Barack Obama rallies and chanted "Yes we can!", and then realised that it does not make any difference.

And so they withdrew underground and laughed at all the idiots and buffoons of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, and nursed their cynicism and self-indulgence. Dostoyevsky writes that when that happens, you enter an age of moral nihilism. I think that is where we are headed.

We have a choice: you can either be complicit in your own enslavement or you can lead a life that has some kind of integrity and meaning; [to have] the capacity to rebel, the capacity to stand up and have the moral autonomy to say no.

Let us not be naive: you are not rewarded in this kind of system for virtue -- and probably in any kind of a system; that is the price of having a life worth living.

Hope -- as Augustine said -- has two beautiful daughters: courage and anger; anger at the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. If you do not have anger and courage, then hope is not a possibility.

The left's thinking is governed by the "Standard Left Explanatory System" -- an intellectual construct that gained popularity in Europe and the US in the 1960s after the demise of European colonialism. The basic principle is simple: Always support the underdog, particularly when non-Western, and always accuse Western powers, preferably the US and its allies, for what the underdog does. Anything aggressive or destructive a non-Western group says or does must be explained by Western dominance or oppression.

The system assumes that if you are nice to people, all conflicts will disappear. It disregards the human desire for dominance, power, and a belief system that gives them self-respect. The system, under the guise of humanitarianism, assumes that non-Western groups do not have a will of their own; that all they do, feel, or want is reactive to the West. It is devoid of respect for non-Western groups: It assumes that they are not responsible for their deeds, and that all they do must be explained by Western victimization.

The world is changing before our eyes. Five years ago the anti-Israel movement may have been marginal. Now it is growing into a problem. Until now boycott organizers had been on the far left. They have a new ally: Islamic organizations that have strengthened greatly throughout Europe in the past two decades. The upshot is a red and green alliance with a significant power base. The red side has a name for championing human rights, while the green side has money. Their union is what led to the success of the Turkish flotilla.