PRESTOPUNDIT

The success of America was .. a devastating blow to the Left. It wasn’t supposed to happen. And American success was particularly galling because it came at the expense of Europe itself, and of the embodiment of the Left’s most utopian dream: the Soviet Union. Even those Leftists who had been outspokenly critical of Stalin’s "excesses" could not forgive America for bringing down the Soviet Empire, and becoming the world’s hyperpower. As Marx and Hegel would have understood, the first signs of hysterical anti-Americanism on the Left accompanied the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The resurgence of American economic power and the defeat of the Soviets exposed the failure of the Left to keep pace with the transformation of the world.