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Posts Tagged ‘Socialism’

Ok, so I created a little dust-up on Facebook with a post about the latest Harris poll, which shows that 67% of Republicans believe Obama’s a socialist, 57% think he’s a Muslim, 45% think he wasn’t born in America, 38% think he’s in some way an equivalent of Hitler, and 24% believe he’s the Anti-Christ. You got that right: About 1/4 of registered Republicans thinks the Devil currently lives in the White House.  If you’re in disbelief and think the poll must be an outlier, a Research2000 poll taken several months ago came up with some similar results. So in this Facebook post I sorta suggested – ok, I really flat out said it – that folks who think these things are insane, specifically bat-shit insane. This drew umbrage from several friends regarding the socialist question, saying there were numerous reasons to believe Obama is a socialist. So I thought about it for a bit and realized they were right and it was a tad over the top to call the socialist believers insane. I then apologized for it (but not for calling insanity on the ones that said yes to the other four questions).

What I should have said is that calling Obama a socialist is meaningless without some context. There’s many versions of socialism. The Swedes and the old USSR fall under the huge umbrella of socialism, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that would claim those governments were cut from the same cloth. There’s totalitarian socialism, a.k.a. communism, democratic socialism, Marxism, mixed socialism, market socialism, libertarian socialism, Utopian socialism, scientific socialism. The list goes on.

So I came up with what is basically a one question quiz to find out if you have even a minimal amount of socialism flowing in your blood. Here’s the question: Removing any questions regarding fiscal solvency, is our Social Security system bad policy?  And again, it is not a question of whether we can afford it in its current configuration. From a philosophical standpoint, was the implementation of Social Security wrong? If you answer no to that question, then you have some socialism in your soul. Don’t worry though, 88% of your fellow citizens are on the same boat with you.

If you honestly believe that a Social Security system is bad policy, and you consider yourself a free market capitalist through and through, that’s ok. But you have to own it.  That means you don’t believe that government should ever regulate the private sector. That means you believe the government has no place regulating lead or arsenic levels in drinking water. You’re good with food producers not having to label the ingredients in their products. Credit card companies can charge whatever interest rates they want. The markets will work everything out. Financial institutions, corporations and manufacturers will always do the right thing – the marketplace will force them or they won’t survive. You agree with all those things, right? No?But government regulation has its roots in socialism, so if you see the need for at least some regulation, then you must have some socialism in you. Deal with it.

So does Obama hold socialist views? Hell, yes. The same could be said for every one of his predecessors dating back to at least Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, probably much further, but I’m too lazy to look. The reality is that the U.S. and every European country has a mish-mash of political ideologies, some having a higher mix of socialism than others. The U.S. falls on the lower end of the scale. Since the days of Reagan, Republicans have been very successful at scaling back regulation, saying it was bad for business. Sometimes that’s a true statement, but government regulation is not an all or nothing issue like many Republicans wish to frame it.  Republicans in the late 1990’s, along with the help of Bill Clinton, threw out the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been enacted following the Great Depression to regulate financial institutions.  Guess what? The repeal of that act was a significant contributing factor to our recent financial meltdown.

So I shouldn’t have called people who think Obama’s a socialist insane. But along the way to this conclusion, I realized that I’d fallen for the meme, hook, line and sinker. What do I mean? When I saw the word socialism in the poll, I immediately considered the extremes of socialism, which is exactly what Fox News and the McCain campaign wanted when they started pushing the notion of Obama being a socialist. Socialism in their world is basically a code for communism and totalitarianism. They couldn’t use those words to describe Obama because they are so easily disprovable, so they played on people’s ignorance and lack of curiosity. They made socialism a bad word, just like the right did with the word liberal in the 80’s. And I fell for it.

So friends, accept my apology for lambasting those who thought Obama has some socialism in him. He does. I do too. And I hope you do as well.