Well, I certainly concur. 
 
I can only add that my own experience with "the left", as a student anyway, has mostly been with (or rather, against) the extreme anti-war fringe. 
Stan was a professor of mine at Capilano and he was critical of an article I wrote for the college paper titled "Say No To MAWO", not because he sympathized or agreed with that particularly psychotic group, but because I may have, in my anti-anti-war stance, discouraged other usually apathetic young students from getting involved in any social justice action. My point, though, was to expose what I found to be the uniquely insane aspects of MAWO, not social activism in general. Looking back, however, I wasn't aware of just how insane MAWO was and still is, and so I may have conflated MAWO's politics and approach with activism in Vancouver more generally, and so in that sense it was me that went too far. 
The reason I think it's important to keep that distinction in mind is because any sort of extreme activism - besides being mostly wrong, if perhaps well-intentioned - is a total turn-off for sensible progressives young and old, and it makes more moderate activism look bad simply by association. Public perception of "good" activism is therefore tainted by groups like MAWO, which, by the way, is just fine with any conservative, MAWO's supposed arch enemy. 
I'm glad that Terry brought up Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter's notion that the counterculture critique of society has done severe damage to the left's ability to articulate coherent and viable policy. Heath and Potter's "The Rebel Sell" should be required reading for my generation, or anybody who still believes in social(ist) revolution or any other anti-establishment/"down with the system" cliches. Their idea, boiled down as far as it will go, is that social non-conformity has, very ironically, become a new conformity. Counterculture is not only what drives capitalist/consumer society (through the "non-conformity" of being "cool" and pursuing personal distinction), they argue, it has also helped foster the dogmatic distrust and contempt for mainstream democratic politics, which (and here's another big irony) is where the hardcore, anti-establishment left is in total agreement with the equally anti-government (and pro-globalization) neo-con right. 
Real non-conformity nowadays consists of actually believing in the power and ethical responsibility of government, and, as Stan suggested, it's an extension of our individual responsibility, not something set over and against us, as the counterculture critique might have it. 
Personally, I chalk up the popularity of anti-establishmentism to its ease as a cliche. It makes it easy to dismiss anything and everything - mainstream media, goverment, military, academia - as merely part of the corporate and/or imperialist, "hegemonic" agenda. 
The fact that extreme anti-war activist groups, such as MAWO, are based on cliches is apparent to anyone who has been to one of their rallies. "Rally" isn't quite the right word, though, they're more like fascist mob gatherings, complete with over-blown speeches and slogan chanting; slogans of the "Hey-hey, ho-ho, all the bad stuff has got to go" sort. You can tell a mob by its incapacity to articulate anything more complex than a cliche. 
 
But I digress. And I'll end it here. 
 
Here's to the left's recovery.

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