Have you noticed that people are beginning to use "the left" and "leftists" when they discuss the opponents of the American way of life who have taken over the Democrats?  It is a healthy trend.

For too long, leftists in America have gotten away with calling themselves "liberal."  As Dennis Prager writes in his great book Still the Best Hope, "[m]any people who hold Left-wing views still prefer to call themselves 'liberal' but their views are indeed Left-wing."  As he points out, John Kennedy was called a liberal – but Kennedy was for a strong national defense and for tax cuts to grow the American economy. 

No one running for president on a platform of strengthening the military and strengthening the economy with tax cuts would have a chance of winning the Democrats' nomination today.  The Democrats have come a long way, baby.  They are now the party of multiculturalism, open borders, welfare and free health care for illegal aliens, and abolishing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). 

Why multiculturalism, open borders, and illegal immigration?  After all, taken together, they will put an end to America.  That is precisely the point.  The leftists have a dream of a transnational, globalist future.  John Kerry promised young Americans they would live in "a borderless world."

Actually, a total victory by the Democrats in America's elections cannot produce a borderless world.  A decision by America to throw open its borders to all comers is not likely to convince the Chinese and the North Koreans to abandon control of their borders.  But the Democrats can produce a borderless America, and they are determined to do it.  The problem is that making America borderless is just a way of making America disappear.  A nation that loses control of its borders rapidly ceases to exist.  That is just common sense.

Kennedy liberals were not anti-American.  If some of their policies were bad for America, it was because those policies were mistaken, not because Kennedy liberals were determined to put an end to America in order to advance a crazy left-wing vision of a borderless, post-American, transnational world.

The Democrats who nominated John F. Kennedy and the Democrats who nominated John F. Kerry and Barack Obama belonged to very different parties.  The name of the party has been kept the same, hiding the change.  Yet you and I must be able to distinguish between Kennedy and Kerry in a readily understood political language.  While it is simply factual to point out that Kennedy and Kerry are both Democrats, it is something different to call them both liberals.  To call Kerry or Obama liberal hides a world of differences, allowing people who are really leftists to pass as liberals.

Robert Curry serves on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute and is the author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea from Encounter Books.  You can preview the book here.