The totalitarian impulse is all too familiar: since I represent Progress (and, of course, everyone who acts in the political realm fervently believes that he represents Progress) those who stand in my way are retrograde–evil, really–forces, that belong in the dustbin of history. Therefore, I might have to lock them up or kill them to ensure that Progress prevails.

Until recently, the totalitarian impulse has been blessedly absent from American politics. Now, however, the American left has caught the totalitarian bug that infected Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, and so many others. A case in point: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the drug-addled son of the former Attorney General. Kennedy thinks it is a shame that he isn’t able to jail or execute the Koch brothers and other conservatives, like–for example–me:

Environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lamented that there were no current laws on the books to punish global warming skeptics. “I wish there were a law you could punish them with. I don’t think there is a law that you can punish those politicians under,” Kennedy told Climate Depot in a one-on-one interview during the People’s Climate March. … Kennedy Jr. accused skeptical politicians of “selling out the public trust.” “Those guys are doing the Koch Brothers bidding and are against all the evidence of the rational mind, saying global warming does not exit. They are contemptible human beings. I wish there were a law you could punish them with. I don’t think there is a law that you can punish those politicians under.” Kennedy saved his most venomous comments for the Koch Brothers, accusing them of “treason” for “polluting our atmosphere.”

“I think it’s treason. Do I think the Koch Brothers are treasonous, yes I do,” Kennedy explained. “They are enjoying making themselves billionaires by impoverishing the rest of us. Do I think they should be in jail, I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at the Hague with all the other war criminals,” Kennedy declared. “Do I think the Koch brothers should be tried for reckless endangerment? Absolutely, that is a criminal offence and they ought to be serving time for it,” he added.

The penalty for treason is death, of course, but Kennedy seems to be willing to settle for life without parole.

The linked Climate Depot post points out that Kennedy isn’t the only liberal who wants to kill or jail those who disagree with him about the Earth’s climate. (Notwithstanding the fact that the “skeptics”–I call them realists–have been resoundingly vindicated, and the CAGW models have proved to be wrong.) Paul Krugman, Josh Marshall, Gawker and James Hansen of NASA are among the many climate hysterics who have demanded that those who disagree with them (i.e., those who have now been proved right) be killed, jailed, or charged with “treason against the planet.”

Nor is the Left’s demand for criminal prosecution of conservatives merely rhetorical. To cite just one instance, Dinesh D’Souza has been criminally charged with a chickenfeed campaign finance offense and the Democratic prosecutor is trying to have him jailed. If D’Souza deserves six months in jail, then Barack Obama deserves 200 years. As we and many others reported in 2008 and again in 2012, Obama set up a web site that was deliberately intended to facilitate illegal contributions. No one else did this–certainly no Republican politicians–but Obama sneered at the law and garnered uncounted millions in illegal contributions as a result.

Then we have the Udall proposal to repeal the First Amendment as it relates to politics. The Udall Amendment would give Congress the unfettered, unqualified power to “regulate…the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.” Under this plan, which every Democrat in the Senate voted for, Congress could make it a felony to contribute money to a Republican’s campaign. Or it could throw a filmmaker in jail for producing a movie that the administration doesn’t like. Sort of like they are trying to do with D’Souza, only this time with constitutional sanction.

We are living in perilous times. For the first time in America’s history, one of our political parties–the one that loses all the arguments–has given up on debate and threatens to use naked power to jail or otherwise silence those who point out the flaws in its theories. If we conservatives remain passive, there is a grave danger that our freedoms may be lost.