37emrob, I'm impressed that you voted for Johnson.  It shows integrity.  But I just could not pull the lever for him.  I knew about his spending increases and deficits when he was NM Gov and just couldn't go that far.  He was libertarian lite.

Re: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  A few weeks ago I finished 'Scorched Earth: Stalin's Reign of Terror' by German scholar Jörg Baberowski (2016).  It goes into great detail about how citizens were murdered when they didn't wholeheartedly embrace the seizure of their small farms by the state, the collectivization of agriculture.  We're talking tens of millions of people, and not all that different from the  Khmer Rouge reign of terror you mentioned.

Probably the best book I've read on the evils of socialism is Joshua Muravchik's 'Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism' (2002).  DPL has it and Roger Kimball has an outstanding review here:

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2002/4/the-death-of-socialism