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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.