RON ROSENBAUM WRITES that the idiocy of some “pro-peace” advocates (he means Amy Wilentz in particular, though he doesn’t use her name) shows that the American Left is in crisis because of its inability to respond to murderers and thugs — from Yasser Arafat to Pol Pot — who mouth a few catchphrases about oppression in the process of their murder and thuggery.

As someone who has long considered himself a liberal, I think what’s going on here has something to do with the deep denial—the displaced fearfulness—the left has about any discussion of the Holocaust, because it might inevitably bring up the one thing the left is too frightened to face: Stalin’s Holocaust, the mass murders that killed more people than Hitler. The mass murders committed by people like Mao and Pol Pot who mouthed their commitment to “peace” and “social justice” while slaughtering millions in the name of leftist ideals.

Yes, that’s been the crazy aunt in the Left’s attic for over 60 years, and the refusal to deal with it has taken a terrible toll on the Left’s intellectual integrity and moral legitimacy. The pathetic state of today’s “peace movement” indicates just how far that degeneration has gone.