Michael Walzer and Mitchell Cohen, co-editors of Dissent, have thrown down the gauntlet on the future of the American Left, battling to defend liberalism from the illiberal forces (Marxism, anti-Westernism, etc.) that threaten to hijack its political agenda. Two examples of this challenge: Walzer’s new collection of essays, Thinking Politically (just reviewed by Adam Kirsch in the New York Sun) and Cohen’s major essay “Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn’t Learn.” In the latter, Cohen goes to town on the anti-Semitism that lurks behind much of the far-Left criticism of Israel. He concludes:

It is time for the Left that learns, that grows, that reflects, that has historical not rhetorical perspective, and that wants a future based on its own best values to say loudly to the Left that never learns: You hijacked “Left” in the last century, but you won’t get away with it again whatever guise you don.

Kirsch is right to praise them for their “intellectual courage.” The resurgence of illiberalism on the far Left is one of the most troubling developments in political discourse in our time.