Scholars say Mao Zedong, Communist China’s leader behind “The Great Leap Forward” (1958 to 1962), which killed up to 55 million Chinese, had a tragic flaw. He saw the “state” as a blob, not individuals with rights, a “utopian,” he pushed “large-scale authoritarian ventures.” Harris, like Mao, has no details, is a “utopian,” sees society as a blob – and suffers the same flaw.
If you doubt this comparison, consider Yale’s James Scott, a scholar of those who think this way, who sees leadership as – my word, not his – manipulation-ship. He does not comment on Harris. I do.
In his book, “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed,” he argues, “the 20th Century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and destruction to millions.” That is what utopianism does.
Among his findings, “centrally managed plans misfire,” that is, social, technocratic, regulatory regimes, pushing new definitions, ideologies, and technologies fail – and fail grandly.
Why? They “impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not – and cannot be – fully understood,” replace working, if imperfect, interpersonal, intercultural, interrelating free markets and free thought, with state mandates.
Individual rights, the uncontrollable mosaic of countless decisions, and differences intermediated by freedom are lost. Lost, too, are relationships built on experimentation, error, learning, and growth.
Lost is “local, practical knowledge,” which can be devastating when survival – access to energy, food, water, and markets – lies in the balance, not to mention “life, liberty, and … happiness.”
As a reviewer notes, “The author builds a persuasive case against ‘development theory’ and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects.”
When it is all about you and ideology, ala Mao Zedong, and the ideology pushed strips individuals of freedom for “progress” and party,” it is over. While Harris is not Mao, her indefiniteness, pseudo-communist economic and social themes, “reimagining” us, fit the model.
Reviews note, that Scott finds “four conditions common to all planning disasters: the administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a ‘high-modernist ideology’ that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large-scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.”
The only real question is that fourth condition. Harris subscribes to “administrative ordering of nature and society by the state,” thus hundreds of executive orders pushing climate hysteria, federal shutdowns of oil and gas, banning gas cars, trucks, trains, mowers, stoves, refrigerators, even trying (she introduced the bill) to ban plastic straws.
Is hers a ‘high-modernist ideology?” She proposes using enforceable mandates to push her versions of science against overlapping but adversely affected majorities under cover of class warfare, sowing discord to “fix it,” blaming open borders (her responsibility) on Trump, defunding the police, delegitimizing the Supreme Court, claiming faux victimhood based on race and gender, then pushing a proletarian uprising for socialism, if not something worse?
Her message is “high-modern ideology,” aggregating power through centralized control over energy, medicine, communication, banking, and public schooling to “end inequality,” solving the “lack of anything” with state giveaways of everything, pushing “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Ring a bell? Marxism.
How about “a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large scale interventions,” mandating all the state wants, eviscerating the Bill of Rights – controlling life for the “higher good.” After all, what was more “authoritarian” and damaging than the COVID mandates?
This is her rough plan, and how authoritarian states “effect large scale interventions” for the greater good; they kill individual rights and never look back. Evidence Cuba, Venezuela, and Laos, not to mention the former Soviet Union, Warsaw Bloc, and today’s Communist China.
Gone are basic liberties, replaced by mandates and fear, people informing on each other– a system Walz shockingly started in Minnesota, neighbors informing on neighbors not wearing masks. Here is radical state control, no free speech, respect for worship, no guns, no fair trials.
These four matter. Signs are not good. Harris is in sync with canceling, condemning, and chilling free speech, offers no defense of worship, is complicit in arresting antiabortion protestors, prosecuting gun makers, and defends abuse of prosecutorial powers for political gain. Democracy?
So, what saves us then from a Harris-Walz “putsch” – already foisted on the Democrat Party, upending their primaries, soft-shoeing that antidemocratic act at their staged convention?
The fourth condition is not present in America. The condition that stops hybrid authoritarian leftism, ideological manipulation-ship, stops the “blob” over individuals – is fighting back.
The way societies fall is clear, “a prostrate civil society which cannot resist such plans.” We cannot be that, must guard the gate. Harris shiveringly channels Mao, which is her tragic flaw.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
