[Cincinatus' Wife]

And when the chaos comes, the natural thing to do — the imperative thing — is: find someone to blame. The planners and schemers are intellectually incapable of dealing seriously with the fact that the project that they have set for themselves — substituting their own judgment for that of the billions of better-informed parties in the market and coming up with superior outcomes — is an impossible one. But once you’ve accepted real limits on what planning can do — on what government can do — then you have at some level essentially surrendered to conservatism.

And that means that somebody, somewhere, must be a racist. .......

The enthusiasm for coercion and the substitution of enemies for ideas — Christians, white men, Israel, “the 1 percent,” the Koch brothers, take your pick — together form the basis for understanding the Left’s current convulsions. The call to imprison people with unapproved ideas about global warming, the Senate Democrats’ vote to repeal the First Amendment, the Ferguson-inspired riots, the picayune political correctness and thought-policing that annoys Jonathan Chait, the IRS’s persecution of conservative political groups, Barack Obama’s White House enemies’ list, the casual violence against conservatives on college campuses and the Left’s instinctive defense of that violence — these are not separate phenomena but part of a single phenomenon.

Soviet Famine: "The government's forced collectivization of agriculture is considered by some a main reason for the famine, as it caused chaos in the countryside. This included the destruction of peasant activists' possessions, the selling and killing of horses for fear they would be seized, and farmers' refraining from field work. Authorities blamed the agitation on the kulaks (rich peasants) and kolkhozs (collectivized farmers), and accused them of sabotage. The authorities wrongly expected that production would increase as a result of agricultural collectivization, because of plans for exporting agricultural products based on attempts to industrialize.

...........Central authorities maintained that the collapse was caused by peasants' hiding their grain crops, despite repeated requests from local authorities that their quota be decreased. As a consequence, local activists led searches for hidden stores of grain; this caused seizure of seed corn that should have been used for sowing the next year's crop and the loss of the stocks needed to feed peasant families.".....

"Lysenkoism is used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives......

......Support from Joseph Stalin gave Lysenko even more momentum and popularity. In 1935, Lysenko compared his opponents in biology to the peasants who still resisted the Soviet government's collectivization strategy, saying that by opposing his theories the traditional geneticists were setting themselves against Marxism. Stalin was in the audience when this speech was made, and he was the first one to stand and applaud, calling out "Bravo, Comrade Lysenko. Bravo." This event emboldened Lysenko and gave him and his ally Prezent free rein to slander the geneticists who still spoke out against him. Many of Lysenkoism's opponents, such as his former mentor Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, were imprisoned or even executed because of Lysenko's and Prezent's denunciations.

On August 7, 1948, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that from that point on Lysenkoism would be taught as "the only correct theory". Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko's research. Criticism of Lysenko was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist", and analogous "non-bourgeois" theories also flourished in other fields in the Soviet academy at this time.........

....From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed....or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943. Hermann Joseph Muller (and his teachings about genetics) was criticized as a bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, and promoting fascism so he left the USSR, to return to the USA via Republican Spain.

In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience"; all geneticists were fired from their jobs (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. Nikita Khrushchev, who claimed to be an expert in agricultural science, also valued Lysenko as a great scientist, and the taboo on genetics continued (but all geneticists were released or rehabilitated posthumously). The ban was only waived in the mid-1960s.".......

[1rudeboy]

Related: whataboutism [Wikipedia].

You see our Russian FReepers do it on a constant basis.

[Rummyfan]

The enthusiasm for coercion and the substitution of enemies for ideas — Christians, white men, Israel, “the 1 percent,” the Koch brothers, take your pick — together form the basis for understanding the Left’s current convulsions. The call to imprison people with unapproved ideas about global warming, the Senate Democrats’ vote to repeal the First Amendment, the Ferguson-inspired riots, the picayune political correctness and thought-policing that annoys Jonathan Chait, the IRS’s persecution of conservative political groups, Barack Obama’s White House enemies’ list, the casual violence against conservatives on college campuses and the Left’s instinctive defense of that violence — these are not separate phenomena but part of a single phenomenon.

The difference between Elizabeth Warren’s partisans and the Tontons Macoutes is very little more than testosterone and time.

[Slings and Arrows]

Of possible interest to your list.

[Tax-chick]

The author implies that the “nakedly coercive” left is a new phenomenon, but it’s not. Leftism has always been about both institutional brute force and vicious personal violence.

Ann Coulter goes through the history very nicely in “Godless.”

[elhombrelibre]

Great article. I find it interesting, too, that some conservatives are embracing statism (think of the Putin fans) as long as the state will force Christian conservatism on people. I get fighting stopping ISIS, al Qaeda, and so on. I don’t get fondness for the president-for-life Putin model as preferable to the American system. When I hear “conservatives” using the failures of Obama to justify their fondness for Putin, I remember the whataboutism of these putinistas and their Soviet ancestors.

[Gritty]

From the Soviet five-year plans to Obamacare, all central-planning exercises begin in hubris and end in chaos.

The difference between Elizabeth Warren’s partisans and the Tontons Macoutes is very little more than testosterone and time.

These are two insightful quotes from an excellent analysis. We aren't seeing "progress" in this country. Instead, we are witnessing it's willful destruction in the name of "progress".

[Carry_Okie]

I was on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz today, exchanging ideas with what might otherwise be some of the most virulent leftists one could imagine. By the way I introduced myself, they simply could not attack me, simply because I have done that of which they only dream: I have restored a native plant habitat, without massive amounts of money, and on my hands and knees in the rain if necessary.

When one snatches from them one of their icons and speaks of many of their goals while identifying the source of distinction being principally one of means (theirs being coercive in nature) while in the same time identifying the source of their failures as their dependencies upon well-hidden corporate corruption, it becomes necessary for them to give at least partial heed.

At that point, the denser among them, usually professors, argued as if I had not heard "their side," believing that it would somehow be impossible for any sentient being NOT to have heard their point of view while immersed for fifty years in NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, Pacifica Radio... whatever. Point that out, and they're stuck. They know damned well they've never heard what I have to say.

Along the way, they'll grasp at straws, effectively foundational truisms by which they can discount "scientific" grounds, climate change, overpopulation, etc. Don't reply with skeptical data, no, point out that the whole crooked fiasco was financed by Rockefellers (ExxonMobil), Pews (Sunoco), or British royals (BP)... explaining that they just don't get how they're being used. It drives them crazy. Then start talking about who funded communism in the first place, that it always has been the flip side of fascism and its armies of bureaucratic experts and university consultants... That scares the crap out of them.

[Carry_Okie]

The way to deal with "what about" is to return with a yet more preposterous association.

"Then why aren't you complaining about how PETA kills puppies?"

[theBuckwheat]

People who view themselves as being from the right or “conservative” must really ponder what kind of values they advocate and defend. Is their end goal to have maximum government that the economy can sustain, so they can have a big and powerful military and use government to impose social values they approve of? Or is their goal to have maximum personal liberty?

The first path takes us to a conservative Utopia through government force. That replaces a liberal Utopia through government force. The issue then is who controls government?

On my part, I advocate the smallest possible government that allows society to be peaceful and orderly, where a person is safe in his property and his liberties. I think people would be surprised at how small a government that would be. That would also imply a very small military and increased obligation by the average citizen to be called to the aid of authorities in the case of riot or insurrection.

It has been my observation that many conservatives relish our powerful military and find it easy to send them off to bomb or invade. Then they find it easy to excuse printing the money to pay for the expedition, thus embezzling the wealth instead of facing the costs honestly through the tax system.

The hard truth is that we have big government and big military because we have been able to embezzle the wealth of the world through the US dollar hegemony. That ability is coming to an end. We cannot print and borrow our way to prosperity. We can only work our way there. But too many Americans have found a way to live at the expense of everyone else and no longer have the will to work. We no longer can have as big a government as we once did. It is time to discover the blessings of liberty once again. It is time for people who consider themselves “conservative” to sincerely ponder just exactly they are trying to conserve.

[Excellence]

From the Soviet five-year plans to Obamacare, all central-planning exercises begin in hubris and end in chaos.

That’s it in a nutshell.

[Brad from Tennessee]

[Central authorities maintained that the collapse was caused by peasants’ hiding their grain crops, despite repeated requests from local authorities that their quota be decreased.]

The Soviet news media supplied a steady stream of propaganda announcing record agricultural feats by the state farm collectives. A common joke was: “If you need milk just take your pail to the radio.”

[Zionist Conspirator]

An excellent article.

[LucyT]

And when the chaos comes, the natural thing to do — the imperative thing — is: find someone to blame. The planners and schemers are intellectually incapable of dealing seriously with the fact that the project that they have set for themselves — substituting their own judgment for that of the billions of better-informed parties in the market and coming up with superior outcomes — is an impossible one. But once you’ve accepted real limits on what planning can do — on what government can do — then you have at some level essentially surrendered to conservatism.

And that means that somebody, somewhere, must be a racist.

[snip]

The Left’s last big idea was Communism. When Lenin turned out to be the god who failed, the Left undertook wide exploration for another grand unifying idea: environmentalism, multiculturalism, economic inequality, atheism, feminism, etc. What it ended up with was an enemies’ list.

That -- and a taste for brute force.

The enthusiasm for coercion and the substitution of enemies for ideas — Christians, white men, Israel, “the 1 percent,” the Koch brothers, take your pick — together form the basis for understanding the Left’s current convulsions.

The call to imprison people with unapproved ideas about global warming,

the Senate Democrats’ vote to repeal the First Amendment, the Ferguson-inspired riots, the picayune political correctness and thought-policing that annoys Jonathan Chait, the IRS’s persecution of conservative political groups, barack ohbama’s White House enemies’ list, the casual violence against conservatives on college campuses and the Left’s instinctive defense of that violence — these are not separate phenomena but part of a single phenomenon.

[gogeo]

This writer kicks @ss and takes names. Devastating.