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Chris
07-11-2012, 01:44 PM
From Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/opinion/obama-the-socialist-not-even-close.html?_r=2&ref=opinion)
Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.

This seems to me to be a standard approach of liberals to the questions of socialism. Someone criticizes a politician, bureaucrat, policy, etc as socialist, that is, as, first and foremost, central planning, and second, coercive redistribution of wealth, and the liberal pulls a bait and switch, first redefining socialism as the extreme of totalitarianism, and then knocks down his own straw man.

When Obama is called a socialist it's because he advocates central planning and coercive redistribution of wealth, not because he is totalitarian--tho' that is where socialism when it fails leads.

So don't fall for this sort of bait and switch. Obama is a socialist.

Peter1469
07-11-2012, 03:49 PM
I read the article this morning. It fails to discuss the interjection of socialist policies into Western democracies and the long-term harm this creates.

Chris
07-11-2012, 07:58 PM
Only a liberal could overlook the devastating effects of social democracy on Europe and cheer on Obama as he pursues that path. Not much different than FDR and his cronies and their admiration of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism before the war.

Peter1469
07-11-2012, 08:05 PM
exactly.

Goldie Locks
07-11-2012, 08:27 PM
No argument from me.,,but it doesn't stop at that. Ubamacare is utterly fascist.