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.
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.