Without the Greenwalds and Mahers, what is left of the left? Guest Brittany Klein

Brittany Klein and I both began on the left but spent the last 10 years identified with conservatives because of our stance on social issues. What happened during our “ten years on the right” is a complex story which we will tell one day. We compiled a book together, Jephthah’s Daughters, which laid out the case for a child’s right to a mother and father. That book came out in 2015 and got us labeled as right-wing fanatics. But for March 15, 2022, we busied ourselves with the task of diagnosing the left, the political camp where both of us began our political consciousness.

Two major defections from the left stand out as prompts for the discussion: Glenn Greenwald, whose Twitter and substack feeds attest to his conviction that the political left has lost itself in crass authoritarianism; and Bill Maher, whose famous takedowns of conservatives have not died but have come to coexist in his HBO soliloquies with increasingly bitter lamentations about the left’s growing extremism. There are many, however, who seem to be J-K-Rowling their way, if not to the right, at least away from the safe compounds of leftist orthodoxy.

Perhaps these are isolated anecdotes. But perhaps they are not. If we are witnessing a deeper trend, it will signify a massive, perhaps twice or thrice in a lifetime, political realignment.

When Brittany and I talk about our youths on the left, we can’t help but feel nostalgic. There was something valuable about belonging to the political camp that championed free speech, opposed repressive puritanism, checked the power of corporations, and critiqued the sins of the military-industrial complex. We can even appreciate that once upon a time the left bore the classy honor of championing racial minorities and sexual misfits who were mistreated or devalued by mainstream society.

The war in Ukraine has perhaps brought into clearer focus what we already witnessed about the left’s degeneration. Or maybe it’s just that now many people are realizing that something has gone terribly wrong with the left. Certainly the vibrancy of the antiwar movement in 2002 makes for a stark and sobering contrast against the left’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I will never forget the adrenaline of twenty years ago, when Colin Powell was appearing before the United Nations making the case for the United States to invade Iraq. Two girls named Rebecca, both white liberal undergrads, crossed my path at SUNY Buffalo back then. They were idealistic and convicted that they might be able to change something for the better. The three of us got together and planned a Books Not Bombs conference on the university campus. We had modules in different classrooms and held a rally in the main plaza by Capen Hall.

My wife and I worked with a host of other people to raise money for buses to New York City and Washington to march against the war, on February 15 and March 15 of 2003. The energy in our camp was utopian. We marched through shoulder-to-shoulder clouds to shout for peace, never imagining a time when all the comrades around us would, twenty years later, be calling for anyone who doubted the Biden administration’s position on Ukraine to be investigated, placed on trial for treason, and arrested.

But here we are.

Historians may argue the point but I believe quite strongly that the antiwar movement made Barack Obama’s presidency possible. Ergo, it was the reaction to the invasion of Iraq that carved out the political left we know today. No other issue felt as compelling and invigorating during the 2000s as resistance to a war that we knew was pure human tragedy. While there was no Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok or Instagram then, we had many mainstream liberal sites that provided consistent news to undercut the warmongering on mainstream media channels like CNN, Fox, and MSNBC.

There was Democracy Now! We had Mother Jones, Salon, Atlantic Monthly, as well as countles