This is a good article about how a political movement can slowly erode the actual philosophy that made it a movement in the first place. I imagine that some are doing the same for the Republican party also with its abandonment of many of the principles that made it strong (small hands-off government, small budgets, etc.). Neither side seems willing to stand up to its kooks and those pulling it away from their basic philosophies.

Leaving the left / I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity: "Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together."