Six thousand Democrat delegates and alternates went to Philadelphia to adopt the most openly socialist platform in history and to launch Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Surprise: it turned out that those two roads diverged sharply. Democrats had to run two parallel conventions and hope most Americans didn’t notice the many contradictions.

Democrats discovered that to answer the Donald Trump challenge, the “Make America Great Again” challenge, they must pretend to love America more than Republicans. That’s a high mountain for neo-Marxists to climb, and it was painful to watch.

In Philadelphia, Democrats had to pretend to love America while pushing ahead with a 2016 party platform that assumes America is a racist, exploitative nation in need of a total makeover.

The convention delegates could not quite manage a moment of silence in honor of slain police officers, but they are certain our criminal justice system needs a complete makeover to root out systemic racism.

They claim Donald Trump is an alarmist demagogue, but not once over the four days of the convention did any speaker utter the words “Islamist terrorism” from the podium.

They claimed to revere American Exceptionalism and traditional American values, but only if those terms are redefined to progressive standards.

Nowhere was this schizophrenia more painfully evident than in New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s speech, which tried to reinterpret the Declaration of Independence as actually a “Declaration of Interdependence.” Booker either has never read the entire document or he chooses to ignore what it plainly meant to the patriots who signed it in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

No, Senator Booker, Jefferson and Washington and Franklin did NOT think independence was a step toward One World harmony. There is a reason for the motto chosen to be printed on all United States currency, “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a new order of the ages.

American were self-conscious of the novelty and radical nature of their experiment in self government. The Founders deliberately separated themselves from the corrupt institutions and values of Europe and did NOT seek to build bridges of “multiculturalism and inclusiveness.”

The equal rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were rights guaranteed by God the Creator, not by a benevolent but eminently corruptible government.

No, Senator Booker, the Christian admonition to “love thy neighbor as thy self” is NOT a petition to government to raise taxes to abolish income inequality or to institute federal re-zoning to require affordable housing in every community.

No American in 1776 reading the Declaration of Independence thought that brotherly or neighborly love could or should be compelled by government decree or a President’s Executive Order.

Booker’s strained efforts to equate civil society’s voluntary associations with global love and charity were clever but dishonest. We often admire cleverness, but not in the service of dishonesty.

Booker implies that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion extends to religions that preach and practice the murder of “apostates,” individuals who chose to leave that religion. What about religions that not only preach death to homosexuals but support it when the religion attains political power?

Is that what America’s founding generation believed when they adopted the Bill of Rights?

Is asking that question an example of “hate speech,” as Senator Booker’s political party now believes?

Booker’s linguistic and historical gymnastics are distasteful but necessary to the progressive enterprise. Democrats must explain and sugarcoat the Democrat Party’s aggressive role in sowing division and class warfare in place of civil order. For every new “victim class” there must be a corresponding culprit, a class of “enemies of the people.”

The ugly, politically incorrect truth is that modern Progressivism requires the sowing of division, distrust and hatred among Americans. It is the height of hypocrisy for Sen. Booker or any Democrat to point a finger of blame for “divisiveness” at Donald Trump or the Republican Party.

Only 26 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction, and that number has held steady for more than a year. The Democrat convention in Philadelphia asked Americans to have faith in an America on autopilot. Trump is saying that the autopilot is set for a nasty crash landing.

Hillary Clinton wants to portray Donald Trump as the barbarian at the gate while she serves a tea made from the ashes of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Will voters be fooled? In just 100 days we will know the answer.