So everything changes, but one thing stays the same. Capitalism is bad, the West is bad, America is vicious and corrupt and needs to be fundamentally transformed. Transformed into what? That’s always vague and subject to change without notice, and ultimately it doesn’t matter.

The left is fundamentally reactionary. It is a reaction against capitalism and against America. The left are defined by what they are against, or more accurately who they hate. So they are drawn to sympathy toward Islam because it is not-us: non-Western, non-American, neither Christian nor a product of the Enlightenment. And I guess that’s what the two ideologies have in common: they are both reactions against the supposed evils of the West. Which explains why leftists tend to find themselves uncomfortable and look for excuses to retreat when they are called upon to defend the West against this rival group of reactionaries.

The only corrective is to start over again from a very different starting point. Anyone who wants “progress” ought to start by asking how we achieved any in the first place. That would require some extended meditation on the virtues of the West, an appreciation of its achievements, an understanding of the ideas and values behind them—and a touch of self-righteousness that makes us too proud to kowtow to the enemies of those ideals.