tony judt, a mainstream leftist if ever there was one, frames the drift of the current political debate nicely. the right, in its cynicism, is suspicious of state power, refusing to learn the lesson of history that state power rocks and is not at all dangerous, a few holocausts, world wars etc notwithstanding. we need to return to the public-spirited idealism at the center of leftism: a faith in the people and institutions that govern us and the coercion by which they do so (summarized as happy ever-increasing taxation), an extreme idealistic hopeful enthusiasm for our own subordination. anyway, thanks for makig the position clear. the one quibble i have about this account is that the right in general is not quite so libertarian as the one judt condemns. it's not that the right doesn't want to impose its values, it's that it wants to impose different values. by judt's standards, that makes them beautiful idealists too, just misled i guess.