At a recent talk at the book store Politics & Prose, leftist Mother Jones journalist David Corn made the claim that conservatives have embraced radicalism in a way that liberals have not. “There’s no example that you can give me,” Corn announced, “of a high-ranking Democrat — a president, presidential candidate, a national Democratic leader — who embraces something like the Tea Party: a conspiratorial, paranoid, racist-driven force. It just doesn’t exist.”

Corn’s analysis is a perfect example of the way liberalism whitewashes its own past and its present connections with socialism and communism. After all, one of the most racist, conspiratorial, paranoid, and violent movements over the last century has been communism, and some of the foremost supporters of that movement have been American liberals, including high-ranking Democrats.