February 28, 2021

Pol Pot's Cambodia: Socialist Vision Carried To Its Logical Conclusion

February 28, 2021/ Francis Menton

About two years ago I visited Cambodia. While there I wrote this January 2019 post, which focused on the “killing fields” genocide that swept Cambodia in 1975-79, during the rule of the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot. In connection with my trip, I bought the Ben Kiernan history titled “The Pol Pot Regime,” which I have just now gotten around to reading.
Why my fascination with Cambodia in the day of the Khmer Rouge? It is one of the clearest modern instances of leftist/socialist ideology put into practice and then pushed to its logical conclusion.
Highly educated elitists got taught a utopian vision of a transformed society with perfect fairness and justice, and they determined to impose that vision upon the backward and unlearned masses in their country. Then they came to power, and got the opportunity to carry out their plans.
The circumstances in Cambodia were such that they could implement their plans with few to no constraints. We get to study the results. Any relevance to our current situation is for the reader to draw.

February 25, 2021

The Worst Racists Are The Left-Wing Academics

February 25, 2021/ Francis Menton

Perhaps you are confused by so much talk lately about racism being all around you, particularly talk about variants going by names like “systemic racism” or “structural racism.” You yourself don’t seem to see much behavior that you think is racist, at least not in any overt or observable way. Are you missing something?
The answer is, you are not looking nearly closely enough at the world of left-wing colleges and their professors and administrators. That is where the really, really bad racism is pervasive.
But wait a minute, you say. Isn’t academia the central headquarters of the high priests of the woke, “anti-racist” religion? Aren’t these professors and college presidents the very same people who presume to lecture the rest of us endlessly about how to be “anti-racist” and how to atone for our sins of “oppression” and “white supremacy”? What makes the Manhattan Contrarian think that these left-wing academics and their institutions may be the worst racists of all?
The main reason we can be sure that these left-wing academics are the worst racists is that they admit it.

February 22, 2021

February 22, 2021/ Francis Menton

In case your memory doesn’t go back that far, the “deplatforming” thing did not just start in the past couple of months.
It was way back in 2016 that Twitter first banned right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos; Facebook followed in 2019. Others getting the same or similar treatment from Twitter, Facebook, and/or Google two or more years ago include Alex Jones of InfoWars and Congressional candidate Laura Loomer.
Then, few on the serious right pushed back. After all, these people are not really our type. Often, they say outrageous things just to provoke a reaction.
But there is a reason why the ACLU, at least in its heyday, thought it was important to defend the rights of avowed neo-Nazis to march in heavily-Jewish Skokie, Illinois. Once the speech-suppression thing gets even a little toe-hold, it can quickly go from seeming insignificance to bold audacity.

February 20, 2021

February 20, 2021/ Francis Menton

It was only a couple of months ago that I had a post contrasting the states of New York and Florida on many different measures of public policy and success (or failure).
The two states are roughly equal in population, yet are at opposite ends of the spectrum on major public policy issues, with New York following the high-tax, high-spend, high-regulation model, and Florida the low-tax, low-spend, low-regulation model.
It seems like every day things get worse for New York and better for Florida.

February 17, 2021

February 17, 2021/ Francis Menton

Texas. It is the number one energy producing state in the United States. It is both the largest producer of oil, and the largest producer of natural gas, and has been for decades. Texas also has abundant coal reserves. It has been ground zero of the fracking revolution, which has revolutionized oil and gas production, vastly increased supplies, driven prices down by around two-thirds since 2014, and turned the U.S. into a net energy exporter for the first time in decades.
By all rights, Texas should be the shining beacon of fossil fuel energy abundance for everyone else to envy.
And yet in Texas this week, there has been a good blast of cold air, accompanied by some meaningful ice and snow storms, and suddenly Texas finds itself with widespread power blackouts covering much of the state.
Although the levels of cold and ice have been somewhat unusual, they have also been well within the range of historical experience. Meanwhile, other states farther north have been colder and have had more snow and more ice and yet the power has not gone out.
What gives?

February 13, 2021

February 13, 2021/ Francis Menton

In her most recent post, Jane observed the substantial resemblance between the current wave of “gender dysphoria,” and various religious mass hysterias throughout history, notably to some during the medieval period. Yet as much as it may be widely discussed and prominently featured in the media in recent years, gender dysphoria still affects only a relatively small number of people.
But how about the campaign against fossil fuels? That also bears great resemblance to religious mass hysteria.
We have the tale of grave sin and the possibility for redemption. We have the priestly caste — politicians of the Democratic Party — that has been anointed to instruct us and lead us into the path of salvation. We have the expulsion of all heretics from the seats of the religion in academia. We have the holy people sermonizing about their own saintliness and our sin. (Greta Thunberg and Bill McKibben come to mind.).
By contrast to transgenderism, this fossil fuel hysteria affects us all.