Once upon a time, being a liberal meant standing for freedom in the face of tyranny. That’s what classical liberalism was, anyway. That’s not what liberalism seems to be anymore. Many of today’s self-described liberals may still talk a good game about liberty, but they then take to the streets to complain when someone actually takes action against tyrants. As long as they have their freedom, they’d rather not have to think about the messy details of how others might gain theirs. But out there in the real world, freedom doesn’t spread unless murdering dictators are actually deposed.

It makes me wonder whether classical liberals still exist. It seems that they do, but many of the classical liberals now call themselves neoconservatives.

Last spring, while traveling around the country talking to students for the Brainwashing 101 project, I met a principled liberal at Yale. His name is Jamie Kirchick, and he has an article in yesterday’s Yale Daily News that makes me wish there were many more liberals like him:

One would expect — or at least hope — that an election in a country once tyrannized by rape rooms, poison gas attacks and aggressive militarization would bring some degree of happiness to self-described liberals. But as with many things in life, reality hardly lives up to expectation.

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To mask their resentment at the rightness of Bush’s cause, these cynics initiate any discussion of the issue with the requisite pleasantries about how elections and democracy are all well and good (with a few half-hearted words of disgust for Hussein thrown in for good measure) and then proceed to denigrate the enactment of the democratic process itself. This attitude has been on full display in both written and spoken form by Yale Coalition for Peace member Ishaan Tharoor (”For Iraq, an American dream that wasn’t,” 2/6). Asked what he thought about the Iraqi election, Tharoor told the News last week, “I think it’s important to remember these elections weren’t benevolently granted, but were disputed for a year and a half of Iraqi occupation.” Indeed, the elections were “disputed” by religious fascists who behead aid workers and maim their innocent countrymen in roadside bomb attacks. But for Tharoor and other individuals of his illiberal ilk, this sort of barbaric behavior constitutes legitimate acts of disputation, as long as it is directed at representatives of the Great Satan.

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It’s telling that the protests, teach-ins and signature drives of two years past — all committed to preventing the war that lead to last month’s exercise in democracy — drew hundreds upon hundreds of righteously indignant students and faculty. Yet when women and ethnic minorities voted for the first time in their lives, hardly anyone at Yale seemed to notice, or care.

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What is vital to remember is that the once-rare images of women voting in the Middle East, of long lines forming at the polls, of Iraqis crying tears of joy at their newfound right — none of these would exist had the United States abstained from invading Iraq two years ago. It is Tharoor’s “agents of occupation” who removed Hussein from power; it is their daily courage and ultimate sacrifice that allowed for last month’s election. The destruction of a thug regime, the imprisonment of its titular head and the flourishing of civil society all stand in testament to the wisdom of the Bush doctrine.

Opponents of the war had every right to make the case against President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. But in recoiling at the very presence of liberalism in its most classic form, these liberals have lost every right to label themselves as such.

If the left wants to save itself from political oblivion, it should realize that the future of liberalism lies in its classical liberal past.