The reason that they’re always paranoid about the right-wing wanting to oppress them is nothing more than classic psychological projection. Jonah Goldberg highlights how it’s not only economics that has headed back to the 1930s, as progressive politics appear to be following suit:
No doubt the fact that neither climate models nor doomsday predictions have panned out (there has been no increase in global temperatures since 1998) is a big part of the story. But my hunch is that the bigger reason for the shift is that Democrats are threatening to really do something about it, and the costs no longer seem hypothetical. Throw in a bad economy, and Americans simply balk. And that’s Americans — the notion that China, India, and Brazil are going to don carbon handcuffs is just silly. Those countries want to get rich, and they’ll gladly sell their carbon to do it.
But the anti-global-warming industry seems to be on autopilot, churning out books that only half-jokingly propose eating your pets. Others insist that Americans will have to restrict themselves to only one child, just like in authoritarian China. If those are the costs, free people will not pay them. In response to popular reluctance, the Jeremiahs are not only getting more shrill, they’re starting to resent democracy itself, sounding more and more like they want to make an end-run around the people.
I always found it totally absurd that anyone thought for five seconds that any society would voluntarily accept a lower standard of living in order to “save the planet”. I mean, when you consider that Americans won’t accept the standard of living they can afford without debt even though it means future generations will be impoverished, it’s a little far-fetched to believe that they’re going to worry overmuch about how a few degrees of temperature over the next 100 years are going to affect the Western Spotted Frog.
And to be blunt, the world would be much better off without progressives than dogs. If totalitarianism is on the table, I can think of a few better uses for it than the progressives appear to have in mind.