I may be beating a dead horse into the ground, but I cannot help myself. The Occupy Wall Street movement is so emblematic of what has gone wrong with leftist politics, that it furnishes the perfect example of its defects. Therefore let me proceed.

Liberals and their more radical allies are fond of portraying themselves as reformers. They tell us that their goal is to correct what is broken in our country so that it can march forward toward its predestined greatness.

This is what they say, but it is not what they believe. Contrary to their expressed attitudes, these folks do not love the United States. They do not want to build it up, but tear it down.

Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama tell us that the Occupy activists are idealists. They thereby imply that their ideals are consistent with the ideals of most Americas. In fact, they are not. The moving lights behind these agitators are a combination of neo-Marxists and anarchists.

How do I know that this is what the Occupy people believe? The answer is simple: they say so. They have also been acting more in accord with these underlying convictions.

For some time, the occupiers have sought to paralyze our financial institutions. They have physically interceded to stop the foreclosures of homes in default and have turned some central cities into war zones. Now some have actually plotted to blow up bridges carrying civilian traffic.

The point of this semi-terrorism is to bring our economic system crashing to the ground. Anarchists believe this is necessary because they regard business as an oppressive agent of the elite. They consequently assume that if they can destroy its infrastructure, it will no longer be able to hold people in bondage.

Their allies, the neo-Marxists, agree because they too perceive capitalists, and the marketplace they dominate, as the enemy. It might be imagined that anarchists would strike out at government as fundamentally unnecessary, whereas liberals would regard it as the protector of the people, but this ignores the bedrock beliefs of the neo-Marxists.

Radicals of every stripe hate those in power—except when they themselves are in power. They therefore hate the government when they perceive it as controlled by bloated capitalists. When, however, their friends—the left wing Democrats—are in charge, they seek governmental aid in destroying the assets of the wealthy.

The bottom line is that both the anarchists and the neo-Marxists expect the government to wither away on its own. If they can first undermine the market system, then the government will no longer be necessary to reign in the excesses of the commercial elite. When that happens, it will simply fade to nothingness. And once that occurs, their shared goal of total personal freedom will have been realized.

So you see the first step is obliterating our current institutions. This is not reform: it is revolution. The people on the street understand this. I assume that the left-wing politicians in Washington understand this—and, in their heart of hearts, approve. Leftists love power, but in their imaginations they too harbor extreme idealistic fantasies.

The question is consequently: Do ordinary Americans understand this? Do they realize that those “children” out on the street would tear down everything they have built—if they could? And if they do, do they really want to be indulgent and pretend that this is an ordinary case of democracy in action?