Back in February of last year, we looked at items by Radley Balko and Jonah Goldberg on what they dubbed "the conservative left", and how it's adopted much of William F. Buckley's old motto of "standing athwart history, yelling stop!"

A hallmark of the pre-Buckley American conservatism of the first half of the twentieth century was isolationism. Ironically though, that impulse was largely eradicated by the events of December 7th, 1941, and modern conservatism was defined by a willingness to fight the Cold War head on. It was something they shared with most mainstream American liberals, prior to what we've referred to a couple of times as "the class of '72".

But in contrast, the events of 9/11, Harry Hatchett writes, fueled a powerful impulse towards isolationism on the left:

This is the curious thing about the past few years – a large part of the anti-war left has effectively substituted for the isolationist right. People who would proudly describe themselves as ‘internationalists’ have found themselves muttering about meddling and puffing indignantly about the rights of ‘sovereign states’.

The best example of this came when Gore Vidal was asked about how else the Iraqi people could be freed from Saddam’s terror state and replied: “Don't you think that's their problem? That's not your problem and that's not my problem.”

So, I shouldn’t really have been surprised when I was canvassing in Bethnal Green and a man who declared himself a “lifelong Tory” and who was voting Conservative told me that he had been on his first demonstration of his life on February 15, 2003 when he marched behind the banners of the SWP and listened to the speeches of Tariq Ali and George Galloway. When I suggested that Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam his reply was “They may well be but it was none of our business was it?”

So when my critical friend asked as to why on this blog we don’t deal with right-wing arguments against the Iraq war and the broader issues perhaps I should have replied: “But we do”.