"The Communist Conspiracy" -- Joseph McCarthy.

"The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" -- Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A time-tested tactic of political beings of all ideological stripes is to set up an external foe. An external enemy helps to legitimize agendas and validate control over followers. The activist calls this tactic Polarization. Polarization involves the setting up of issues and personalities according to a Good-Evil axis, with the activist's forces living on the side of the Good, and his opponent's residing on the side of Evil.

In the Manichean world of the political activist events are either positive or negative, and persons either friends or villains, according to uncomplicated stereotypes. The stereotyping routinely degenerates into images that are demeaning and slanderous. The purpose of the stereotyping is to discredit opposing ideas or destroy the reputations of opposing personalities. "The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and all ages," said Henry Clay, "It marks its victim; denounces it; and incites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments."

George Orwell was born in 1903. A socialist who came to abhor the doctrine for its authoritarianism, in 1946 he wrote Animal Farm. The book, which became an instant classic, is a parody on how the elites in an egalitarianist authoritarianism manufacture foes to retain the reins of power. "Man is the only enemy we have," says one of the pigs. "Remove man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever."