This From TNR:

Ref (a): Peretz, Martin. "Losing our Delusions", The New Republic, 2005/02/17
Ref (b): Beinart, Peter. "A Fighting Faith", The New Republic, 2005/12/13

From the Wilderness, voices of reason are heard:

This patronizing attitude is proof positive that, as deep as the social and economic gains have been among African Americans, many liberals prefer to maintain their own time-honored patronizing position vis-à-vis "the other," the needy. This is, frankly, in sharp contrast to President Bush, who seems not to be impeded by race difference (and gender difference) in his appointments and among his friends. Maybe it is just a generational thing, and, if it is that, it is also a good thing. But he may be the first president who apparently does not see individual people in racial categories or sex categories. White or black, woman or man, just as long as you're a conservative. That is also an expression of liberation from bias. This patronizing attitude is proof positive that, as deep as the social and economic gains have been among African Americans, many liberals prefer to maintain their own time-honored patronizing position vis-à-vis "the other," the needy. This is, frankly, in sharp contrast to President Bush, who seems not to be impeded by race difference (and gender difference) in his appointments and among his friends. Maybe it is just a generational thing, and, if it is that, it is also a good thing. But he may be the first president who apparently does not see individual people in racial categories or sex categories. White or black, woman or man, just as long as you're a conservative. That is also an expression of liberation from bias.

Perhaps something is worth fighting for:

Peter Beinart has argued, also in these pages ("A Fighting Faith," December 13, 2004), the case for a vast national and Iinternational mobilization against Islamic fanaticism and Arab terrorism. It is typologically the same people who wanted the United States to let communism triumph--in postwar Italy and Greece, in mid-cold war France and late-cold war Portugal--who object to U.S. efforts right now in the Middle East. You hear the schadenfreude in their voices--you read it in their words--at our troubles in Iraq. For months, liberals have been peddling one disaster scenario after another, one contradictory fact somehow reinforcing another, hoping now against hope that their gloomy visions will come true.

And perhaps there is a chance that a modern liberalism can establish itself:

I happen to believe that they won't. This will not curb the liberal complaint. That complaint is not a matter of circumstance. It is a permanent affliction of the liberal mind. It is not a symptom; it is a condition. And it is a condition related to the desperate hopes liberals have vested in the United Nations. That is their lodestone. But the lodestone does not perform. It is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked. It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics. It does not recognize a genocide when the genocide is seen and understood by all. Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let's hope we still have the strength.

All good consensual polities require a clash of contemporary ideas. In the United States, the Left is reactionary and therefore reaching back a half century to a golden era. There are very few new concepts stemming from modern American Liberalism. In Europe, the Left succeeded in forming socialist democracies but wears the blinders of moral relativism concerning the emergence of a destructive 'counter culture' immigrating from far off lands. Now Europe must deal with masses of unassimilated 'citizens' who do not fundamentally believe in, and thus challenge, the very fabric on which the social democracy is built.