{"id":22464,"date":"2019-03-14T17:42:30","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T21:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=22464"},"modified":"2019-03-14T17:47:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T21:47:47","slug":"the-democratic-socialist-platform-echoes-the-madness-of-the-khmer-rouge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/03\/14\/the-democratic-socialist-platform-echoes-the-madness-of-the-khmer-rouge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Democratic Socialist Platform Echoes the Madness of the Khmer Rouge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script async type=text\/javascript src=https:\/\/www.dclick.io\/static\/js\/ad.min.js><\/script>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/supload.com\/H1u5sBdD4\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i.supload.com\/HJx_9sBdPE.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/h2>\n<p>In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over, they quickly emptied the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. This was to be <a href=\"http:\/\/factsanddetails.com\/southeast-asia\/Cambodia\/sub5_2b\/entry-2852.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">year Zero<\/a>; a rebirth of Cambodia as an engineered egalitarian, classless rural society with \u201cthe corruption and parasitism of city life\u201d eliminated. Several million had to leave at once, including hospital patients. Those who refused were summarily executed. Those who left were forced to work in fields, where many died while being fed starvation rations.<\/p>\n<p>Genocide against their own citizens resulted in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Khmer_Rouge_Killing_Fields\" rel=\"nofollow\">up to 2.5 million dead<\/a> out of a population of 8 million. Over 1.3 million of the dead were executed.<\/p>\n<p>Driven mad by class politics, Khmer Rouge soldiers dehumanized their victims. Khmer Rouge soldiers \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/factsanddetails.com\/southeast-asia\/Cambodia\/sub5_2b\/entry-2852.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">fired aimlessly at innocent civilians<\/a> as long as someone offended them in any way.\u201d They reserved special brutality for those in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1997\/08\/03\/weekinreview\/in-cambodia-a-middle-classless-society.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Cambodia\u2019s middle class<\/a>, \u201cthe doctors, bankers, teachers and merchants, the people who read books and even the ones who just wore glasses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dehumanizing those you murder is characteristic of totalitarian regimes. Hitler killed Jews. Stalin killed kulaks. Mao killed landlords. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/www.nytimes.com\/books\/first\/p\/pran-cambodia.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">took the \u201cmost violent<\/a> and ignorant people, and\u2026taught them to lead, manage, control, and destroy.\u201d As deranged cadres murdered, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pol-Pot-Nightmare-Philip-Short\/dp\/0805080066\" rel=\"nofollow\">some chanted the couplet<\/a> taught by their leaders, \u201cTo keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-0\">Identity Politics Leads to Dehumanization<\/h2>\n<p>You want to believe that such madness could never visit America. Yet, a cancer of identity politics, with its concurrent demands for social justice, continues to grow. A mindset of dehumanizing those who are not in your tribe is taking root in more people. After all, the \u201cother\u201d is just someone who is in the way of a more \u201cjust\u201d society.<\/p>\n<p>Writing in his book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2EHNNdT\" rel=\"nofollow\">Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy<\/a><\/em>, Jonah Goldberg observes, \u201cIdentity politics in all its forms is just a subset of this worldview. It says \u2018My tribe deserves more than your tribe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If my tribe deserves more than your tribe then, in Goldberg\u2019s words, \u201cobjective standards of merit or notions of free speech are invalid, even racist, if they perpetuate the amorphously defined evil of \u2018white privilege.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Goldberg explains succinctly why those demanding social justice aim to dismantle the rule of law:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Spend a few minutes actually studying what activists mean by \u201csocial justice\u201d and you will discover that it is often a reactionary effort. It claims the rule of law is a rigged system designed to protect the interests of the patriarchy or white privilege or the \u201cone percent.\u201d Social justice holds that abstract rules or timeless principles are inadequate if they do not lead to \u201credistributive\u201d or \u201ceconomic\u201d justice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2 id=\"link-1\">The Democratic Socialist Platform<\/h2>\n<p>While great attention has been rightfully placed on the potentially destructive force of the Green New Deal, other alarming parts of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dsausa.org\/about-us\/what-is-democratic-socialism\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">democratic socialist platform<\/a> have slipped under the radar. Consider this part of their platform:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Although a long-term goal of socialism is to eliminate all but the most enjoyable kinds of labor, we recognize that unappealing jobs will long remain. These tasks would be spread among as many people as possible rather than distributed on the basis of class, race, ethnicity, or gender, as they are under capitalism. And this undesirable work should be among the best, not the least, rewarded work within the economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You might wonder who will do the \u201cspreading\u201d and \u201cdistributing\u201d of jobs. The democratic socialists write, \u201cFor now, the burden should be placed on the employer to make work desirable by raising wages, offering benefits and improving the work environment.\u201d Impatience with \u201cprogress\u201d will quickly morph into demands that the government rectify perceived injustices.<\/p>\n<p>You might also wonder who will decide what is undesirable? The democratic socialists offer no answers. Answers will be provided later, based on the tribal politics <em>en vogue<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>If you think Americans will categorically reject such vague foolishness, think again. Rather than associating socialism with government ownership of production, today more Americans think <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/opinion\/polling-matters\/243362\/meaning-socialism-americans-today.aspx\" rel=\"nofollow\">socialism means \u201cequality.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If too many \u201cethnic and racial undesirables\u201d are represented in high-paying jobs in the medical community, will doctors be forced to trade jobs and salaries with medical aides? Will software engineers trade jobs and salaries with office custodians? How likely is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to trade jobs with a coal miner in Wheeling, West Virginia?<\/p>\n<p>To achieve the goal of distributing \u201cundesirable\u201d jobs would require no less than complete totalitarian control of the economy. Democratic socialists will enforce the rule of tribal power in place of the rule of law.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"link-2\">Hayek on Social Justice<\/h2>\n<p>In Volume 2 of\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Law-Legislation-Liberty-Mirage-Justice\/dp\/0226320839\" rel=\"nofollow\">Law, Legislation and Liberty: the Mirage of Social Justice<\/a><\/em>, Nobel laureate\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/fee.org\/people\/f-a-hayek\" rel=\"nofollow\">F.A. Hayek<\/a> challenges us to consider &#8220;whether it is possible to preserve a market order while imposing upon it some pattern of remuneration\u201d based on \u201csocial justice\u201d criteria and imposed by \u201can authority possessing the power to enforce it.&#8221; Hayek&#8217;s answer is &#8220;no.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Why, then, is the concept of social justice so popular? Hayek provides an answer:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The results of the spontaneous ordering of the market [are] interpreted as if some thinking being deliberately directed them, or as if the particular benefits or harm different persons derived from them were determined by deliberate acts of will.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In short, someone did it; so someone needs to fix it.<\/p>\n<p>Using Hayek\u2019s lens, we can see that a belief in injustice could begin in childhood and extend into adulthood. Who has received everything they felt they deserved from their parents, from school, from work, or from life?<\/p>\n<p>We tell ourselves stories about our second-grade teacher who forgot about us, a parent who didn\u2019t understand us during our teenage years, or a boss who didn\u2019t recognize our talent. Looking through the lens of the \u201cstory of me,\u201d we feel like victims. This is why stories of victims and victimizers dominate the media. Looking for who is at fault can become a full-time occupation.<\/p>\n<p>No wonder there are so many angry and bitter individuals; they are still trying to get others and life to conform to their expectations. Taking responsibility for our experience of life begins with understanding that life will never conform to our imagined ideas about how things should be.<\/p>\n<p>In his lifetime, Hayek earned a fraction of what Stephen King has earned, and no one is at fault. Hayek writes,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Incomes earned in the market by different persons will normally not correspond to the relative values of their services to any one person &#8230; the performance of a Beethoven sonata &#8230; or a play by Shakespeare have no &#8220;value to society&#8221; but a value only to those who know and appreciate them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, there is no objective value.<\/p>\n<p>Should a tax be placed on Stephen King\u2019s novels to ensure that unpopular writers are better compensated? We can only reach what we see as \u201cjustice\u201d by mistreating some people. Hayek writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To assure the same material position to people who differ greatly in their strength, intelligence, skill, knowledge, and perseverance as well as in their physical and social environment, government would clearly have to treat them very differently.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hayek points us to look in a different direction where \u201conly the conduct of the players but not the result can be just.\u201d Of course, democratic socialists argue the opposite\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2019\/01\/22\/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-a-system-that-allows-billionaires-to-exist-is-immoral.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said<\/a> a society that &#8220;allows billionaires to exist&#8221; along with extreme poverty is &#8220;immoral.&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez didn\u2019t say billionaires are immoral, but by conflating billionaires and poverty, Ocasio-Cortez is implying cause and effect.<\/p>\n<p>The murderous Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikiquote.org\/wiki\/Pol_Pot\" rel=\"nofollow\">in a 1979 interview<\/a> said, \u201cOur policy was to provide an affluent life for the people. There were mistakes made in carrying it out.\u201d In one of history\u2019s great understatements, Pol Pot allowed, \u201cSeveral thousand people may have died.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/the-good-intentions-fallacy-is-driving-support-for-democratic-socialism\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Good intentions don\u2019t matter<\/a>, totalitarian social justice policies are antithetical to fostering human well-being.<\/p>\n<p>Take a moment and reflect on the breathtaking progress that has occurred in the world due to capitalism. <a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/the-worlds-poorest-people-are-getting-richer-faster-than-anyone-else\" rel=\"nofollow\">Alexander Hammond observes<\/a>, \u201cin 1820, 94 percent of the world\u2019s population lived in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 per day adjusted for purchasing power). In 1990 this figure was 34.8 percent, and in 2015, just 9.6 percent.\u201d Perhaps those living in 2219 will wonder how we, in 2019, could live on such meager earnings.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic socialists are tirelessly working to subvert progress. Their policies will destroy the economy and shrink the economic pie. Tribal conflicts, steadily diminishing in the West under capitalism, will rise again to threaten the peace and prosperity of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Today, some use violence to prevent free speech. We can shudder to think what tribal violence is possible in a future America when citizens are morally and economically impoverished by democratic socialist totalitarian doctrines.<\/p>\n<div>\n<h5><a href=\"http:\/\/fee.org\/people\/barry-brownstein\/\"> Barry Brownstein<br \/>\n<\/a><\/h5>\n<p>Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/The-Inner-Work-Leadership-Barry-Brownstein\/dp\/0984425403?tag=foundationforeco\"><em>The Inner-Work of Leadership<\/em><\/a>. To receive Barry&#8217;s essays subscribe at <a href=\"http:\/\/givingupcontrol.us11.list-manage1.com\/subscribe?u=9f90da3819262b93ad1f6d668&amp;id=d86ea3faef\">Mindset Shifts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"font-style: italic;\">This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the <a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/the-democratic-socialist-platform-echoes-the-madness-of-the-khmer-rouge\/\">original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fee.org\/counter\/180110\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><script src=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/Scripts\/fee-repub.js\" async=\"async\"><\/script>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<div class=\"dclickad\" data-client=\"darth-azrael\" data-slot=\"1552599726695\">\n<\/div>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over, they quickly emptied the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. This was to be year Zero; a rebirth of Cambodia as an engineered egalitarian, classless rural society with \u201cthe corruption and parasitism of city life\u201d eliminated. Several million had to leave at once, including hospital patients. Those who refused were summarily executed. Those who left were forced to work in fields, where many died while being fed starvation rations. Genocide against their own citizens resulted in up to 2.5 million dead out of a population of 8 million. Over 1.3 million of the dead were executed. Driven mad by class politics, Khmer Rouge soldiers dehumanized their victims. Khmer Rouge soldiers \u201cfired aimlessly at innocent civilians as long as someone offended them in any way.\u201d They reserved special brutality for those in Cambodia\u2019s middle class, \u201cthe doctors, bankers, teachers and merchants, the people who read books and even the ones who just wore glasses.\u201d Dehumanizing those you murder is characteristic of totalitarian regimes. Hitler killed Jews. Stalin killed kulaks. Mao killed landlords. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge took the \u201cmost violent and ignorant people, and\u2026taught them to lead, manage, control, and destroy.\u201d As deranged [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2025,3401,1574],"class_list":["post-22464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics","tag-democratic-socialism","tag-khmer-rouge","tag-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}