Sorry, can't blame this one on the "neo-cons" (anyone ever figure out just what a "neo-con" is, anyway? A lot of the time in political speeches it seems to be shorthand for "Jew.")

Modern political liberals, specifically the people represented by the post-1960s Democratic party, have earned their reputation. Summa cum laude.

We are not simply talking about people with "open minds," or philosophical liberals like the classic definition.

We are talking about people who support a largely collectivist view of the world, see almost every aspect of human existence as the proper function of government, and support centralized solutions, enforced by the coercive power of the state, for almost every problem of society. With the best of motivations, of course.

Go through the policies of the Democratic Party over the past twenty years. How many platform planks are there that increase the power of the individual and local government and reduce the power of the central/Federal government? How many are the inverse?

I have stymied more than one "liberal" by asking them to tell me one major economic policy where they would disagree with a card-carrying socialist. Sometime the smarter ones manage to light on "ownership of the means of production." I then point out that most modern Democrat politicians believe in nearly-total government control over almost every aspect of the means of production, and the actual ownership is almost beside the point. It's pretty much downhill from there.

The names have changed over the years. Communist. Socialist. New Left. Leftist. The latest term seems to be "progressive." Given the history of this philosophy, it's not surprising that they keep changing the name.