Left?

Letter-writers especially, but also columnists, and even AP and other news reporters use the terms left and leftist too often without definition. Take the cartoon of President Obama pulling the Democrat Party donkey labeled "The Left" toward the "Obamamania 2010" goal line. What was the cartoonist thinking? Consider foreign policy. For 70 years, the Democrats and Republicans have jointly pursued war after war into permanent war--Cold War, Drug War, War on Terror, Culture War; WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, in all, according to William Blum, forty-three invasions or interventions, with each Party trying to outdo the other in patriotic rhetoric and votes for military budgets. Dr. Strangelove , that great satire of US/USSR Cold War madness, was specifically about liberals as embodied in the Democrats. So what is liberal? I'll return to this subject. Dick