It should be relatively uncontroversial to say that Obama is at least a democratic socialist, and to the left of the Clintonite/DLC Third Way crowd. The question is how far to the left.
Obama is hard to pigeonhole, as he seems to draw from a number of socalist influences. His philosophy, such as I can ascertain it, is something like a neo-Fabian socialism with strong dirigiste tendencies. But even those labels are at best approximations for the hodge-podge of thinking that influences Obama's policy. To the extent that Obama is incrementalist and non-revolutionary in the Fabian tradition, I think it is as a result of his own reaction to and synthesis of the more radical and revolutionary (even communist) influences in his life, and not so much of a direct influence of Fabian thinkers.
Obama economic policies clearly indicating a sharp shift to the left:
- A directly redistributionist "tax" scheme, whereby some individuals will have a negative income tax burden with a cash payout. With this tax scheme, Obama is going beyond the more traditional Democratic role for the welfare state in providing social services such as education, health care, and transportation, and going for direct cash redistribution.
- A basic taxation philosophy of "fairness" even when faced with the possiblity of reducing government tax revenue. This is essentially a punitive tax philosophy in that Obama doesn't care that poorer people could be better cared for if the government had more revenue, he cares that people are more "equal".
- In an Internationalist flair, Obama and others introduced the Global Poverty Act, which calls for the US to annually and perpetually commit 0.7% of its GDP to an international welfare plan, estimated to cost $800 billion to $1 trillion over ten years.
- Obama supported the dirigiste plan to provide government loans to the auto manufacturers in order to re-tool.
- Punitive and arbitrary taxes on oil companies with direct cash redistribution to the
proletariatpeople.
What about some of the less savory trends in socialist politics?
- Proud supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, an Orwellian-named scheme to allow Union Bosses to strong-arm workers into organizing by denying them their right to a secret ballot. Even George McGovern says the EFCA "cannot be justified".
- Banning "scab" employees, giving Unions a death-grip over employers.
- Campaign sponsored efforts to harass and shout-down critics and media personalities.
- Campaign sponsored "truth squad" legal intimidation of critics.
- Campaign support of a front-group to ACORN's massive voter registration fraud efforts.
- Repeated efforts to silence critics by invoking alleged racial animus. (Just ask Bill and Hill.)
The Aesthetic - Somewhat tangential, but no discussion of Obama-the-Red would be complete without it:
- Creepy soviet-style iconography. (One, two)
- Creepy cult of personality.
- Creepy messianism. (One, two)
- Creepy "Obama youth" style fraternities.
- Creepy youth propaganda songs.
Unhinged Supporters - For all the talk of the right becoming unhinged, it seems that Obama supporters are the nuttier ones, even engaging in violence on behalf of The One:
- Molotov cocktails threaten to burn down a house.
- Arson hits a McCain billboard, burning it to the ground.
- Numerous accounts of stolen and defaced McCain signs.
Without getting too far into the weeds of Marxist theory, it is generally understood that a true Communist society would see the dissolution of the state. All communist attempts to date have involved intermediate steps, usually involving a strong socialist state presence. So to try to shoehorn Obama into being a communist is not helpful rhetorically, and is largely irrelevant anyway from a practical perspective.
It's sufficient to say that Obama is a socialist and hasn't been shy about drawing from some of the more left-leaning elements of socialist and Marxist thought.
Bill Clinton he isn't.
5 comments:
this article from yahoo should make you feel better about voter fraud. Apparently, the FBI is investigating. Still, I would be reluctant to pull the voter fraud card after the stories that came out after the last two Bush elections (which all take a back seat to what Kennedy pulled on Nixon, of course).
~MJA
I've been consistently against electronic-only machines.
Whether anything happened before is both unknowable (-thus the problem) and presently irrelevant to the problem at hand.
Election fraud hurts everybody, winners and losers.
Nice article.
If there were a fire at your house, or mansion, or palace, who would you call?
Do you put it out yourself? Do you use Bush's tax cuts to hire people to stand gaurd in case of a fire? Or do you dial 911 and expect the fire department to come? No offense intended but some of your points are stretching.
I forgot to mention "voter fraud". It's not "voter fraud" to fill out an apllication. That might be considered registration fraud.
People were making extra money by putting anything on the voter registrations, even Mickey Mouse. Do you really thin someone was going to dress up in a Mickey Mouse costume and try to vote?
I'm stretching? Municipal fire companies are a far cry from federal income redistribution and an international welfare super-state.
I don't think I'm stretching in my assertion that Obama is a socialist. If anything I left stuff out because the post was becoming epic in size.
Voter fraud - Not all of them are "mickey mouse". Most of them are passable names. There have already been media accounts of people showing up to vote under these new fake registered names. There's also an effort to commit fraud based on temporary, or in some cases entirely fictional addresses. Real people, fake addresses.
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