If the late Christopher Hitchens is to be believed, a portrait of Leon Trotsky graces the office wall of a reputedly conservative professor at the University of Chicago who once served as a member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff under Alexander M. Haig, Jr. Yet perhaps there is little to be surprised at here. Was there not more than a whiff of "internationalism" in the democratization programs pushed by the administration of George W. Bush? But to have spawned such followers is hardly a recipe for popularity, at least among the youth. Trotsky is little known and not much studied on American campuses these days. Of course, the collapse of the Soviet Union also weighs against Trotsky. Whether the USSR embodied or betrayed the essence of communism, or perhaps did something in between, no one is much interested in shouldering responsibility for that monster. Thus Trotsky's goateed visage no longer looks down on us from the red banners carried aloft at anti-war demonstrations, its place now taken by that of Che Guevara, a man who never accomplished or established anything at all. From the perspective of popular acclaim, better to be an empty military coat that we can fill with our own hopes and desires (replicas now available from Belstaff at $635 a pop) than a figure of historical . . .

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