Assessing the Obama administration?s approach to foreign policy, National Review?s Jonah Goldberg wonders what ever happened to liberals? traditional idealism:

[O]ne could generalize by saying that there was a useful division of labor whereby liberals directed our collective gaze toward various evils and injustices (famines, apartheid, illiberal regimes) and it fell to conservatives to explain why America could do only so much, if anything, to remedy them. This is one of the reasons conservatism has always had a reputation for hard-heartedness. ? Conservatives are supposed to look for the downside, the cost; this is in the national interest. The damn hippies are supposed to dream of buying the world a Coke and the conservatives are supposed to sniff that it costs too much and there?s a moral hazard in handing out soft drinks for free.

At some point over the last decade, that division of labor broke down.

You might remember Goldberg?s recent UNC-Chapel Hill speech, in which he discussed the downside of the liberal pursuit of political ?unity.?