Liberalism vs. Leftism

April 30, 2025April 30, 2025 / painethomas68@gmail.com

Thomas Paine: American Philosopher, & Revolutionary

From 1776 through the formation of The Constitution I helped create America. Now I have returned to help save America. American Patriots must join together, speak out in free and open discussion to fight the “woke” anti-American mob, and further the cause of FREEDOM.

Liberalism Could be Tolerated, Marxist Leftism Cannot

The arena of political “debate” in the country these days, most of it rather nasty, has drawn clear lines in the sand, as heated rhetoric is thrown about like virtual ammunition between well-entrenched keyboards across the battlefield of social media. As opposing viewpoints, it is widely accepted that one side is commonly referred to as “liberals” and the other side as “conservatives’. I submit there are distinctions among the liberals relative to different eras of the Democrat Party that I explain below.

If we step back for a moment to look at the big picture, we must recognize that we are in the midst of an ideological war that We the People, as Patriots, must win. The stakes are extremely high as America itself, a shining example of freedom and individualism, is on the brink of being “fundamentally transformed” into a communist nation by Obama’s army of Marxist activists.

Dr. Paul Kengor, Professor of Political Science at Grove City College, says that the definition of totalitarianism is to “seek to fundamentally transform – specifically, to fundamentally transform human nature via some form of political-ideological-cultural upheaval.” [1]

I’ve written about this before in The Socialist Agenda of Alinsky and Obama, published in two parts, December 2021. You can read about it in detail HERE.

To lose this war is to subject our descendants into a life of misery under the iron fist of tyranny. The good news is that our enemy is not a superior force in terms of numbers. In fact, it’s probably much smaller than what the media has been making it out to be. The reason I say this is because the media, collectively referred to as the Propaganda Media Complex (PMC), otherwise often called the Mainstream Media (MSM), is actively colluding to deceive the American people into thinking the Democrat Party is a formidable foe. It certainly seems that way because that’s all you hear. The PMC/MSM is the official mouthpiece of the Democrat Party and they control a huge percentage of all the information that we are being fed. They thereby control the social consciousness and the populace is blindly influenced by what they are told.

The Democrat Party has been hijacked by Obama and his 30,000+ member activist army, Organizing for Action. I would argue that they are relatively a minor faction of the Democrat Party but they are in total control of the party, the media, academia, Hollywood, and have infiltrated nearly every major institution in the country. HOWEVER, this faction of Marxist, communist ideologues does not represent the entire Democrat mindset. Democrats are marching in lock-step, as they always do, but many of them are what I call “traditional” liberals, whose core values remain as compassionate, caring people who still embrace the plights of the unfortunate, and have been caught up in the hysteria created by the media that they must resist everything Republicans say and do, simply because they are Republicans. Given the time and opportunity to allow the MAGA movement to show them that their lives will be drastically improved under Trump’s policies, many of them could defect. And if the Democrats are reduced to a faction of pure communists, it’s quite possible they will disintegrate as a viable political force. Our focus, as Patriots, should perhaps be to facilitate a fracture among Democrats. Coerce them to reject their communist leadership and revert to their more traditional sensibilities. They must be convinced that leftism is not the next progression from liberalism, but a perversion of it. They must be convinced that the leadership of today’s Democrat Party doesn’t have the slightest concern for underprivileged citizens. Their only concern is permanent power, achieved by any means necessary, the primary stratagem encouraged by Obama himself.

He has embraced the concept published by Saul Alinsky, in Rules for Radicals, that to achieve any measure of political influence, it is necessary to effect change by dividing the country along socioeconomic lines, pitting the “Have-Nots” against the “Haves”, and playing the core instincts of “traditional” liberals to go along with his “hope and change” campaign slogan. They fell for it, hook, line and sinker. And now, 16 years later, how much better off are they?

The point of all this, is that the Democrat Party has morphed a couple times since its founding in 1828. The party formed by Martin Van Buren in the leadup to the election of Andrew Jackson, that basically held modern-day Republican values, was what could be called the “modern” Democrats, or what I’ve termed “classical” liberals. I don’t believe those Democrats had much to do with what I call “traditional” liberalism, which started to appear in the late 19^th century, under Grover Cleveland (POTUS 22, 1885-1889, and POTUS 24, 1893-1897). Cleveland was a fiscal conservative, committed to the principles of “classical” liberalism, who fought against corruption, patronage, and political “bossism”, in other words, a virtual Republican who would be a pariah in today’s Democrat Party regarding his ideals. [2] But he also strongly opposed tariffs working to reverse the effects of the McKinley Tariff bill and was able to relieve some tariffs on raw materials but the revenue shortfall had to be countered by passing an income tax of two percent on income above $4,000, equivalent to about $131,281 in 2022 dollars. We all know how Democrats love taxes, as a means to fund their ever-burgeoning bureaucracy.

During Cleveland’s second term, the Progressive Era arose, often recognized as beginning in 1896 and lasting until 1917. In that period the Progressives were a collective group of social activists focused on defeating corruption, arguing against government waste and inefficiencies, and fighting monopolies. That initial Progressive Era is acknowledged as ending when The United States got involved in World War I. By the time Woodrow Wilson entered the White House (POTUS 28, 1913-1921), the Democrat Party had fully morphed into progressivism and was completely behind his “New Freedom” platform that focused on lower tariffs and breaking up large corporations in favor of the “little man” to create a level playing field. [3] After teaching at several colleges, Wilson was appointed as President of Princeton University in 1902, “where he emerged as a prominent spokesman for progressivism in higher education,” though, as President, he worked to keep African Americans out of the school [4], a policy that wouldn’t pass as progressive today and would, in fact, be deemed racist.

These so-called “traditional” liberals formed the backbone of support for the Democrat Party for over 100 years, and are to this day, arguably the majority of the party. And then Obama came along and everything changed. Traditional liberalism morphed into “radical” liberalism, or extreme leftism, and all those “traditional” liberals were caught up in the media adulation. He is practiced in the art of deception by his Islamic upbringing and he played the Democrat Party like a fiddle, transforming the party as they went about their lives. Trump and the MAGA movement is the only thing standing in his way.

With that in mind, I’ll take this opportunity to allow “traditional” liberals the chance to save face and denounce the Democrat Party, for many of them aren’t even aware that their beloved party has been hijacked. Life can be busy. There are millions of voters who haven’t been paying attention. They simply go out every four years and perform their civic duty, feeling good about themselves for having voted, but they’ve been disengaged and manipulated by the PMC/MSM in the final weeks, casting crucial votes in swing states that have serious consequences for all of us. We the People cannot afford to continue down that path. We must facilitate a conflict between the “traditional” liberals and those “radical” liberals, also known as the Marxist leftists. It should not be that difficult because the stance they have chosen on every issue is virtually insane. As an example of one of the “hills they chose to die on”, they are publicly advocating for the non-existent rights of violent criminal aliens over all concerns for American citizens. We can split the Democrat Party, effectively driving a wedge that could dissolve the party and force them to rebrand, as the Democrat-Republicans morphed into the “modern” Democrat Party. They could stick with the name, but in my (almost never) humble opinion, they’d be better off rebranding under a new banner because Obama has put such a stain on them, they’d never recover.

Speak out at every opportunity. Stay firm in your convictions. Remind them that this is not their father’s Democrat Party, but a political hijacking. Stay the course. Victory is on the horizon.

Comments welcomed.