I was born into an insane world, one that had a large segment of humanity barricaded behind spite walls not intended so much to keep outsiders out as to keep insiders in. Freedom was imprisoned. That was insane, but not so much as those who were outside those walls who defended them, advocated them, apologized for them and rooted for the monsters who had erected them.

Part of the wall fell on this date in 1989, and was followed in time by the collapse of much of the rest. There are still prison states that hold their populations hostage, but not many, none major. But the world is still insane. Many of those who had defended them, advocated them, apologized for them and rooted for the monsters who had erected them have not recanted and long for those good old days.

Today's A&L Daily has a roundup of commentary. I liked parts of this one.

When the Berlin Wall came down, the politics and history departments of my college—Birkbeck College, at the University of London—called an emergency meeting to discuss how to understand what was happening. Though I was known to be acquainted with many who had led the protests and who were shaping the provisional governments, I was not asked to speak. Instead, two more reliable authorities were called upon to explain the unforeseen developments: Eric Hobsbawm, the Old Left historian, who was to remain a member of the British Communist Party until the moment when it finally dissolved itself in embarrassment; and Perry Anderson, founder of the New Left Review and guru of the liberationist movements of the 1960s. Both had supported the old Soviet order, Hobsbawm explicitly, Anderson by default. Neither had done anything coherent to help the Eastern European opposition, and neither knew a thing about the social and civic initiatives that had brought Communism to an end. But both were kosher: if there was a way to preserve the socialist project through this crisis, they would know.

For my leftist colleagues, in other words, the events were the occasion for a renewed debate, between Old Left and New, about the future of the socialist idea. That the changes in Eastern Europe contained a refutation of the Left, both Old and New, was an impermissible thought; that they marked a decisive break with socialism in all its forms, and a final end to the lies about the Soviet Union that the British socialist establishment had internalized, was an unmentionable one. People of goodwill were being called upon to “normalize” what had happened and to proceed as though nothing fundamental had changed.

In the event, the response of my left-wing colleagues was the right one. I, in my naivety, believed that a whole society could come to see the folly of the socialist idea, and by jettisoning a project that inevitably led to the expansion of the state and the destruction of civil society, would put liberty instead of equality at the top of its political agenda. It was not to be. As my colleagues illustrated, the socialist idea, once in place, is immovable. Of course, it will change its name and moderate its methods according to the spirit of the times. But in the modern world, there will always be a section of society—not necessarily the majority, but the one with which the intellectuals identify, and upon whose inertia they rely—that puts equality first and regards liberty as a dubious asset benefiting only the few.

The problem is . . .

[I]t’s important for educated elites in the U.S. and Western Europe to seriously consider the degree to which that state, the state that provides services and protections, is an institution to which those elites have privileged access. It is in some sense “their” institution: they provide its upper leadership and fill out most of the middle management in areas that process or generate expert knowledge and intervention. They feel more comfortable interpreting the state’s activities and interacting with its operations. If they feel at risk from the actions of the government, they’re often more comfortable negotiating or actively blocking those actions. (If nothing else, you’re going to be a more successful NIMBY if you’ve got some money and some education on your side.) When you feel more comfortable with government, it’s hard to understand why anyone else wouldn’t feel the same way.

They are educated, but only for very small values of educated. That's the real issue here. Our educational institutions have comprehensively failed to actually educate their charges, and so they go out into the world poorly equipped to function, making a mess of society, and blaming others for their mistakes. It's poor character as much as poor education, but that too is formed largely by educational institutions.

I disagree with Scruton (from the first pull quote) that intellectuals put equality first and regard liberty as a dubious asset benefiting only the few. They want as much liberty as possible for themselves. Equality is only for peasants, who must not have the liberty to pursue their low class objectives since it threatens the intellectuals. It is no mystery why they supported those old communist prison wardens and their walls, and continue to look back wistfully at those times and places, yearning for a return.