Yes, but... (#135092)
by Jonathan Dresner on June 17, 2009 at 10:12 PM

Largely in agreement, but must quibble slightly: Wouldn't it make more sense to put the origin of the cycle at the First Red Scare and see the "Brown Scare" as an echo of that? Or is it more important, in this instance, to highlight the largely forgotten liberal side of the equation?

More broadly, there's a long history of political purges in democracies, going back at least to the Roman Republic. My hypothesis is that the frequency of purges rise more or less as a function of the organization level of a state (Chinese premodern purges were pretty vicious at times) and the sense of crisis within that state.