What exactly were they? How did this happen? Here's how:

America's Sharp Left Turn Began With Education Takeover Many Americans are wondering how their country, a supposed "center-right" nation, reached the point of electing and reelecting the most radical leftist administration in its history. Indeed, a long chain of events giving rise to a confluence of societal changes had to occur for such a fundamental reordering to take place. What exactly were they? How did this happen? Here's how: First, when the liberal Democrat establishment, manifested by the teachers unions, decisively gained control of public education in the U.S. over four decades ago, the perpetrators may or may not have been conscious of setting the process in motion. But that they did, regardless. You may recall how American public schools gradually abandoned values and lowered standards — the former having the effect of diluting the nation's public morality and the latter achieving the mass dumb down of our populace. Attitudes of the U.S. citizenry today would have been very foreign to our population of even 20 or 30 years ago. Homosexual marriage, legal marijuana, class warfare, national bankruptcy, socialized medicine and communists knowingly appointed to the executive branch! Those were radical ideas even in our recent past. Or how about electing a president closely associated with an anti-American, communist terrorist (B. Ayers), and an anti-American, anti-semitic, Marxist (Rev. Wright), a president whose entire personal history was admittedly one of continual associations of the same kind? On the cognitive side, what of reelecting that president despite an abysmal economic record borne of his radical policies? (No, Barack Obama did not cure the recession. It ended during the last Bush fiscal year. Never heard that from the media, did you?) Aside from re-engineering public values, the Democrat education establishment did have that parallel track of producing the "moron voter" capable of swallowing liberal claptrap, and therefore electing Democrat candidates a more informed electorate would not have considered only a few years earlier. A better-educated citizenry surely would have been less likely to vote for continued progress toward national bankruptcy, strangulation of our energy resources leading to higher gas prices, destruction of the greatest health care system in the world (rated #1 in outcomes by the World Health Organization, despite what you've heard), and weakened national defense while our adversaries are building up. But how did we get to this point? There had to be more. There was. Along with destroying the fiber of two whole generations of Americans via the dumbing-down and moral neutering, the liberal education establishment pursued a third track very consciously, one that has involved injecting their ideological propaganda into the primary and secondary schooling process. A large fraction of U.S. citizens under the age of 50 have received a heavy dose of liberal Democrat brainwashing during their school years. Then, of course, it gets worse in college, as students' beliefs and attitudes are coached, and shaped, by the predominantly left-wing faculty. You can see it vividly in college classrooms in the form of false but politically correct stereotypes and bromides our students internalize. Make a statement of truly objective fact to many college students today, such as socialism doesn't work or Soviet communism was tyranny, or even that a higher minimum wage causes unemployment, and they would regard it as crackpot right-wing lunacy. This is a result of the long-running re-education camp known as America's public school system, augmented by the mainstream media, Hollywood, and other functionaries of liberal culture who eagerly reinforce the programmed conditioning. Concerning those mainstream media in particular, their role in the ideological transmogrification of American society has been profound. Always overwhelmingly liberal Democrat, as confirmed by empirical studies, leading print and electronic media personalities naturally have shaded reporting and commentary in favor of their own ideology. No surprise there; unethical, yes, but also no less than human nature — which the morally weak media did not have the strength to resist. In more recent times, however, the liberal Democrat media (and it is long overdue to apply that locution) became drunk with their power and completely lost control of themselves. Realizing that they could actually influence the national polity, including elections, the media abandoned any semblance of journalistic balance and became shameless mouthpieces for liberalism, the Democrat National Committee, and any political cause or candidate of the political spectrum's left side. National reporters and news anchors have descended to the level of overt cheerleaders for the left. They blatantly run interference for Barack Obama, even to the point of abetting the cover up of major scandals such as Benghazi. Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer really should read the news wearing cheerleader sweaters featuring a big red "L" each night. Such offenders could be described as a disgrace to their profession if their profession were journalism. But it's not. It's prostitution. This insidious management, control and perversion of the American information environment has had a tangible cost. According to political science findings, Democrat candidates enjoy about a seven-point voter "ignorance advantage." That is, if the U.S. electorate had full comprehension of major party positions, there would be a seven point swing to Republicans. (Again, that the Dems target the moron vote is not entirely a caricature.) Some of this ignorance effect is the residue of the referenced malpractice of the liberal education establishment, but another part would be attributable to disinformation propagated by the liberal media.