Have you heard the latest out of England? A commitment to the institutions of democracy. No excuses or apologies for tyranny. A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An affirmation that the United States is a great country and nation.

These notions may seem common sense, bordering on banal. Yet they have caused quite the ruckus within the British and North American left. They are key tenets of the “Euston Manifesto,” a statement of broadly left-liberal principles cooked up last spring by a collection of London-based journalists, activists and academics. First published in the New Statesman in early April, the manifesto was officially launched on May 25 (and is available online at eustonmanifesto.org).

The purpose of the Euston Manifesto is, essentially, to save the left from itself. It is an attempt to draw a clear line between the social-democratic liberal left and the anti-war left, the latter of which has, since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, made common cause with tyrants, excused terrorists, and — in some cases — sold out the rights of women to reactionary theologians, all in the service of a single-minded opposition to the United States. Enough, write the authors of the Euston Manifesto: “We must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive-democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic ‘anti-imperialism’ and/or hostility to the current US administration.”

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