Dear Wretchard,

Spot on in all your analyses. No, the left will not collapse if Obama loses. The reason was given in some acute analyses by the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. He wrote that by the early twentieth century the best minds in Europe knew that the ideology of the left was intellectually untenable. If so, one naturally asks, how could Communism sweep through so much of the world in spite of its intellectual unsoundness? Because, as Voegelin pointed out, great dead ideas have a kind of forward momentum, like the undead. Communism lurched forward like a zombie until it realized it had no life and then collapsed.

Why did the left not dissolve after the palpable failure of their dream? Because, as Voegelin wrote, given their premises, they had nowhere else to go. The compulsion to repeat lives.

Best,

Richard Moorton