Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian economist has written a great deal about political philosophy. In his essay "Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition"  written in 1927 he compares what we would term "classical liberalism" with today's "liberalism". I have reproduced below an excerpt from the preface of the third English translation edition (1985) available as an e-book at http://www.mises.org/liberal.asp .

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"The social order created by the philosophy of the Enlightenment assigned supremacy to the common man. In his capacity as a consumer, the "regular fellow" was called upon to determine ultimately what should be produced, in what quantity and of what quality, by whom, how, and where; in his capacity as a voter, he was sovereign in directing his nation's policies. In the pre-capitalistic society those had been paramount who had the strength to beat their weaker fellows into submission."

"The much decried "mechanism" of the free market leaves only one way open to the acquisition of wealth, viz., to succeed in serving the consumers in the best possible and cheapest way. To this "democracy" of the market corresponds, in the sphere of the conduct of affairs of state, the system of representative government. The greatness of the period between the Napoleonic Wars and the first World War consisted precisely in the fact that the social ideal after the realization of which the most eminent men were striving was free trade in a peaceful world of free nations. It was an age of unprecedented improvement in the standard of living for a rapidly increasing population. It was the age of liberalism. "

"Today the tenets of this nineteenth-century philosophy of liberalism are almost forgotten. In continental Europe it is remembered only by a few. In England the term "liberal" is mostly used to signify a program that only in details differs from the totalitarianism of the socialists. In the United States "liberal" means today a set of ideas and political postulates that in every regard are the opposite of all that "Liberalism" meant to the preceding generations. The American self-styled liberal aims at government omnipotence, is a resolute foe of free enterprise, and advocates all-round planning by the authorities, i.e., socialism. [emphasis mine] These "liberals" are anxious to emphasize that they disapprove of the Russian dictator's policies not on account of their socialistic or communistic character but merely on account of their imperialistic tendencies. Every measure aiming at confiscating some of the assets of those who own more than the average or at restricting the rights of the owners of property is considered as liberal and progressive. Practically unlimited discretionary power is vested in government agencies the decisions of which are exempt from judicial review. The few upright citizens who dare to criticize this trend toward administrative despotism are branded as extremists, reactionaries, economic royalists, and Fascists. It is suggested that a free country ought not to tolerate political activities on the part of such "public enemies."

"Surprisingly enough, these ideas are in this country viewed as specifically American, as the continuation of the principles and the philosophy of the Pilgrim Fathers, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the authors of the Constitution and the Federalist papers. Only few people realize that these allegedly progressive policies originated in Europe and that their most brilliant nineteenth century exponent was Bismarck, whose policies no American would qualify as progressive and liberal. Bismarck's Sozialpolitik was inaugurated in 1881, more than fifty years before its replica, F.D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Following in the wake of the German Reich, the then most successful power, all European industrial nations more or less adopted the system that pretended to benefit the masses at the expense of a minority of "rugged individualists." The generation that reached voting age after the end of the first World War took statism for granted and had only contempt for the "bourgeois prejudice," liberty."

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Consistent with this analysis and the conclusions von Mises draws is the following quote from U. S. Senator Joseph S. Clark, Jr., when he was mayor of Philadelphia:

“To lay a ghost at the outset and to dismiss semantics, a liberal is here defined as one who believes in utilizing the full force of government for the advancement of social, political, and economic justice at the municipal, state, national, and international levels.... A liberal believes government is a proper tool to use in the development of a society which attempts to carry Christian principles of conduct into practical effect. (Atlantic, July 1953, p. 27)”

In my view there are in the United States (and to a degree around the world) the same two socio-political theories locked in a struggle that started more than one hundred years ago. It is the struggle between capitalism and socialism, between individual independence and group dependence, between liberty-and-freedom and command-and-control. Those favoring the capitalist view enjoy the daily competition from which they can derive greater material satisfaction as the result of their own efforts. They crave freedom from command-and-control. Those favoring the socialist view (as defined by Senator Clark) must have command-and-control to effect their Vision. They camouflage their need behind an expressed wish to redistribute existing material wealth so as to reduce the to its irreducible minimum the disparity between those with more and those with less.  However, the socialists have made a fatal assumption. It is that there is enough material wealth existent to satisfy all or, if there isn't, more will be generated from the efforts of those who wish to produce more solely to satisfy some inner need to be productive with no desire to benefit materially from that activity. In spite of there being no compelling evidence that this assumption has any validity after more than one hundred years of experience, those favoring socialism MUST persist in believing the assumption is correct. There are any number of hypotheses relating to why some people persist in striving to implement socialism. I have discussed this on another page.

In summary, it is clear to me that the Anointed are trying to transmogrify the constitutional representative democracy designed by our Founding Fathers into a socialistic form of centralized control political system with themselves in control. If you disagree please feel free to contact me with your logical, documented arguments disproving my assertion. And remember - rhetoric is not a substitute for logic and evidence.