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I've always said that Leftism has captured and stolen the soul of the Democrat Party.

This essay, written by a Liberal (NOT a Leftist) educator explains exactly what is the difference between a liberal and a Leftist.

We liberals should sharply distinguish “liberal” from “Leftist.” The latter characterized by anger, hatred, bullying, intransigence, and intellectual dishonesty. These spiritual diseases, legacies of the French Revolution and its Terror, began to infect liberalism in the early 20th century. This ugly spirit has contaminated much of academic life outside the hard sciences, economics, and business schools. As a consequence, many of the ideas and attitudes in the humanities and social sciences are profoundly, tragically misguided.

A checklist of Liberalism. Note that there's no embrace of Marxist ideas; rather, liberals appreciate the fact that our capitalistic economic system is a giver to anyone willing to work.

A checklist to determine whether or not Liberalism has returned to our campuses:

1. Are most students and professors aware that under 19th century free market capitalism in the United States and Britain that it was not true that “the rich got richer and the poor got poorer?” i.e., that the working class standard of living steadily increased under laissez-faire capitalism?
2. Do most students and professors understand that wealth is created almost exclusively by private enterprise (given a framework based on the rule of law)?
3. Are most students and professors aware that Marxist governments murdered over 100 million people in the 20th century, vastly exceeding the loss of human life due to the Nazis?
4. Do most students and professors acknowledge that those humanely-motivated academics who self-identified as Marxists should, indeed, accept responsibility for having advocated a repeatedly murderous ideology? (“We didn't intend those outcomes” is not an adequate excuse after the fourth totalitarian Marxist regime, predictably enough, committed mass murder.)
5. Do most students and professors understand public choice theory?
6. Do most students and professors understand the necessary relationship between economic freedom, on the one hand, and creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, on the other?

So, read the thing, and weep for what's happened to the Democrats, to the liberals. There's no turning back, now; because Barack Obama is a Leftist.

h/t Dan Collins @ PW

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