It wasn’t long ago that most conspiracy theories came from conservatives. The right, after all gave our country the John Birch Society. But these days, liberals have a virtual monopoly on loony ideas -- and they seem to be getting crazier all the time.

For example, in case you haven’t noticed, the United States is sliding into fascism. Well, not sliding, actually. We’re being driven into fascism. By you-know-who.

“Beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society,” Naomi Wolf wrote this year in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “There is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship,” she insists, and the Bush administration purportedly is following all the steps. Items on Wolf’s checklist include: “Create a gulag,” “Develop a thug caste” and “Control the press.”

Really.

Now, you’d think people might notice if things like that were going on. But Wolf explains why we haven’t. “Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government -- the task of being aware of the Constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors -- we scarcely recognize the checks and balances that the Founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled,” she insists.

Actually, Wolf isn’t wrong about one thing: We have allowed judges and lawyers to control too much power. But who’s to blame for that development? Liberals. Conservatives have been fighting for years to limit the powers exercised by courts. We want to see a society where lawmakers legislate, the executive enforces and judges interpret. It’s liberals who try to use the courts to enact policies (such as gay marriage) that they could never convince voters to go for. As for whether or not Americans learn about the Founders, well, conservatives would love to see schoolchildren taught more about the remarkable men who started this country. Unfortunately, our liberal-dominated education system has replaced “History” with “Social Studies.”

It apparently takes years to teach children that Columbus was a racist who came here simply to kill Indians, that George Washington was a slave owner only looking out for his own interests and that everyone from Ben Franklin to Abe Lincoln was gay. By the time kids have “learned” all that, there’s no time left to actually, you know, read the Constitution.

Wolf’s a fairly mainstream liberal. She was the key advisor to Al Gore during his 2000 presidential bid, who, among other things, advised him to wear earth tones. So when she espouses crazed theories about creeping totalitarianism, it’s fair to assume many other liberals share her dementia.

Filmmaker Michael Moore proves that.

Just before his latest diatribe, “Sicko,” was released, Moore told reporters he was afraid the Bush administration would attempt to confiscate it. “We took measures a few weeks ago to place a master copy of this film in Canada so if they did take our negative we would have a duplicate negative of this film in Canada,” Moore told reporters.

The corpulent conman claimed that the feds might seize his movie because 15 minutes were filmed in Cuba. These scenes include a visit to Naomi Wolf’s supposed “gulag” at Guantanamo Bay. A gulag where, according to Moore, prisoners get better health care than Americans. Try to square that circle.

In the event, of course, Moore’s film hit screens without government interference. The only thing blocking the screen, in fact, seems to have been people leaving the theater early. Even presidential candidate John Edwards admitted, “I didn’t quite get to see the end.”

Maybe that’s because the former senator had to rush out on his recent poverty tour. “One in eight of us … do not have enough money for the food, shelter, and clothing they need,” claims Edwards who, while serving as a spokesman for the poor, is building himself one of the largest homes in North Carolina.

In reality, though, we’re not tripping over emaciated poor people at every turn. For the most part, the U.S. has defeated real poverty.

Nine out of 10 families defined as “poor” by the government report they have enough to eat. In fact, “poor” children get almost exactly the same nutrition as middle-class children. A poor child today is expected to grow up to be an inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the average American soldier in World War II.

Why don’t we hear much about this good news? Maybe because (in Wolf’s model) the Bush administration controls the press and doesn’t want good economic news reported. Maybe it’s all part of a Bushco plot to seize more power.

Sounds like a crazy theory. But, sadly, it’s as sane as anything we’ve heard from the left lately.