In 1947 Americans for Democratic Action was founded by anticommunist liberals who, galvanized by the onset of the Cold War, were contesting with anti-anticommunists for control of the Democratic Party. The ADA, said one of its founders, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., believed that liberalism had been "fundamentally reshaped" by a "historical re-education" about the threat of Soviet totalitarianism.

Beinart [of the New Republic] is dismayed that more than three years after Sept. 11, liberalism has not been "fundamentally reshaped." It "remains largely what it was in the 1990s -- a collection of domestic interests and concerns." But Beinart may not be sufficiently dismayed, because he may not recognize how Kuttnerism [of American Prospect] complicates the recovery of anything like 1947 liberalism's robust patriotism and confidence in America's capacity to do good abroad.

[...]

Beinart is bravely trying to do for liberalism what another magazine editor -- the National Review's William Buckley -- did for conservatism by excommunicating the Birchers from the conservative movement. But Buckley's task was easier than Beinart's will be because the Birchers were never remotely as central to the Republican base as the Moore-MoveOn faction is to the Democratic base.

The nation needs a 1947 liberalism -- anti-totalitarian but without what Beinart calls the Bush administration's "near-theological faith in the transformative capacity of U.S. military might." Wish Beinart well.