The American Spectator

Maybe it got better after that but your humble correspondent threw in the towel after about an hour.

A conspiracy-minded liberal might have wondered if Karl Rove himself had somehow organized the event since the main message seemed to be that participating in the system was for suckers.

Still, misguided as they were, they weren’t bad kids. One made an appeal for blankets, scarves and other items for the homeless, noting that some would probably freeze to death that night.

But they also represented the more self-destructive side of radical liberalism. As the evening showed they were more interested in thumbing their nose at authority than actually working to change it and more interested in partying than party building. That’s the funny thing about anarchists: they tend to be anarchic.

Thus their radicalism ultimately turns on itself: rather than do something constructive like register voters they do much more “edgy” things like hold open-mike poetry readings in sub-zero weather.

These are the people that liberals from Ralph Nader to Dennis Kucinich placed their hopes with and that others like Howard Dean hoped to ride to the top of the Democratic Party on. Is it any wonder that these efforts all came to grief?