L.A. Weekly's John Powers recently wrote a terrific column examining the difference between The Nation and The Weekly Standard. A good followup is John Rosenberg's reminiscences of his days as a staff member over at The Nation, detailing the last thing he wrote for that venerable publication.

As I've written here before, the Left is increasingly viewed as ideologically incoherent and intellectually stunted by more and more people. The one thing I haven't mentioned is this: humorless. Except when it comes to bashing white males, Republicans, Christians, and corporations, and there comes a point where that game stops amusing all but the most hard-core partisan.

Money has nothing to do with any of this. There are countless deep-pocket left-oriented foundations, and the mainstream press is littered with left-of-center columnists--most of them equally dreary and increasingly incoherent. Besides, glossy pages don't make a good magazine. Good writing does.

The sad deterioration Maureen Dowd increasingly reminds me of The Picture of Dorian Gray: her deteriation symbolizes an entire generation of so-called "liberal intellectuals," most of whom still look normal but are, underneath, freakishly irrelevant and out of place in the post-9/11 world.

Here's the real issue: the people we call "conservative" or "the right" are, in fact, today's liberals. The old-line "liberals" or "progressives" are an anachronistic holdover from the Vietnam era, whose "progressives" were themselves the last gasp of the early 20th century's socialists. This is an archaic and dying worldview that is no longer relevant; they won some battles, lost some others, but generally their time is past.

I increasingly believe that the real battleground today is what John Fonte has dubbed "transnational progressives versus liberal democrats." This is what will fire the imagination of young people, and will increasingly dominate the arguments to come. This is why the "left" or "liberal" publications are dying--the so-called "right" has grabbed the mantle of liberal democracy, and is bright, vibrant, and full of laughter, life, and intellectual diversity. The left doesn't even know what it is anymore, and can only define itself by what it opposes: evil Republicans and "the radical right."

The Old Left still hasn't figured that out. They will soon face a choice: become the advocates for Transnational Progressivism, join the so-called "right" as liberal democrats, or go extinct.

I really don't think there are any other choices.

If you haven't read John Fonte's article on Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism yet, you should set aside a half hour to read it and contemplate it. I'm not the first person to link to it, nor will I be the last. I am increasingly convinced that he's identified the real ideological divide of the next generation. And I'm already enjoying my own small role as a partisan for the liberal democrats. Even as I tremble for our future.

(By the way, I got the link to the LA Weekly column from Media Minded, who linked to further comments from John Rosenberg, who I introduced him to and try to read every day. Ah the wonders of the Blogosphere.)