I see a lot of arguments start in Left and Right Blogistan when a conservative calls Obama a socialist, and Democrats dogpile the name-caller and insist our president is no such thing.
Many Dems say that with bitter disappointment, while other Obama fangirls smugly parrot the media meme that he is a moderate. So there is disagreement even the Democrat camp.
It's Simple: Obama is a Socialist
Socialism is...
* a social and economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy
* a political theory and movement that aims at the establishment of such a system.
* "Social ownership" may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, state ownership, citizen ownership of equity, or any combination of these.
* "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
(Source: Wikipedia - Socialism)
Those bullet points are right out of Obama's Progressive Democrat manifesto. Sure, he's not going to seize factories. Why do that when you can post government agents to enforce government decrees and then shake down the owners and workers at the end of the day today for the money you need to bribe the poor to vote for you tomorrow?
Even Bernie Sanders, a good, honest Socialist, doesn't advocate a complete state takeover of the means of production. Like Obama, he just wants to confiscate "excess" wealth from productive people and "spread it around" to the losers of life's lottery.
That's socialism. It doesn't work, never has.
What about Euro-Socialism?
The closest socialism gets to working is the democratic socialism-lite as practiced in Germany and Scandinavian countries. Their government-social models rest upon a foundation of trust (as well as a wealth of state-owned natural resources), shared values, and societal homogeneity.
Go look there now. The model is breaking down as populations age and governments are forced to bring in unassimilable immigrants to prop up the Ponzi scheme and old age social safety nets. They are finding out that if you build a Field of Dreams welfare state, they will come. From poor Eastern European nations, Southern European Gypsy camps, and Muslim North Africa.
Sweden has made perhaps the most dramatic turn, and is now shockingly un-socialist in many ways, practicing what could be more accurately described as secular subsidiarity. Obama and his minions are driving in the opposite direction.
America is not Northern Europe
Obama and his progressive Democrats have socialist aspirations, but they execute them poorly, thus angering both left and right. It doesn't help that our federal government is an unaccountable army of lumbering cyclops under the control of unaccountable lawyers and international financiers.
A grossly inefficient government does not upset Democrats, but some aspects of Obama's crony crapitalism does. Doling out billions to Solyndra and other political cronies is ok with them, but they don't like him cozying with Wall Street Banksters and toadying to global corporatists and the international oligarchs. Those actions make him indistinguishable from the garden variety Republican, as does his lust for ever more power.
Wait 'till Hillary Wields the Expanded Powers we handed Obama
So, in summary, Obama is a socialist of the modern-day statist variety. He is also a corporatist who feeds the war machine, and he does a pretty good job maintaining that uneasy tension.
Tyler Durden and Zero Hedge sums up Obama perfectly:
Obama’s job was to talk like a marxist, but act like a robber baron. In this regard, his reign has been an unprecedented success.
Hillary will be more of the same, only without the charisma and easy smile. We'll see if a scowling, scolding grandma with an attic of arsenic and old lace and basement full of dark secrets can keep the project going...
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