Recently I had a great discussion with Jamie Glazov about my book ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left‘ in which we covered some of that long history of the Left’s war on America.

The Glazov Gang discussion touched on particular themes including the rise of the ‘communes’ in the early 19th century.

The ‘Communists’ from those communes then went on to play a major role in our public policy.

It leads to a line that Mark Tapson quotes in his own very kind review of my book at Front Page Magazine.

“The Utopian Left is convinced that history can be broken away from the past and that its ideology will carry us away to ‘the right side of history,” writes Greenfield. The past is an inconvenient reminder to these utopians that human nature exists – it is not merely a social construction – and that any endeavor to engineer a perfect society inevitably begins with coercion and ends not in the ideal society but in mass misery and death.”

The communes have always proved unworkable, whether in the 19th century or the 20th, but rather than learn from the failure, leftists insisted that they hadn’t tried to make us miserable on a large enough scale.

Having failed at the local level, they aspired to try again at the national level. And having failed at the national level, they aspired to try again on the global level.