O’Reilly Tonight: Is Obama a Socialist?
May 4, 2010
On The O’Reilly Factor tonight, Bill wants to talk about whether it’s fair to call Obama a “socialist.”
I don’t think that label is constructive, or very accurate. Pure socialism means public ownership of the means of production. Obama has said he prefers single-payer health care, but Obamacare didn’t go that far. Under his watch, the government came to own most of General Motors, but he says that’s temporary. So should we call him an “almost” socialist?”
Self-described socialists, like Frank Llewellyn, director of the Democratic Socialists of America, say that Obama isn’t one of them. When we called Llewellyn, he gave these reasons:
Obama talked about free markets more than any other candidates in the 2008 election… Obama is not trying to re-structure economy and take it out of private hands… his health plan left insurers intact.
And get this: He said Sarah Palin is just as much of a socialist as Obama, because when she was Governor of Alaska, she raised taxes on oil companies and gave the money to the public. Interesting argument.
I’d call Obama an interventionist. An arrogant interventionist. He wants government control over health care, banking, energy, education, and the auto industry. He has “lawyers’ disease.” Law school misleads lawyers into thinking that smart bureaucrats can successfully micromanage life with paper and procedure. He wants to increase regulation everywhere.
Those are terrible ideas.
We would do well to remember what Hayek wrote in 1941: that "the more central planning there is, the less the individual can plan."
It’s frightening how many people don’t get that state control is recipe for stagnation and poverty. A recent Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of liberals have a “positive image” of “socialism”.
stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com
Bloggingheads: Is Obama a Socialist?
David Frum, left, of FrumForum and Jonah Goldberg of National Review debate whether the president is a socialist.
(video)
video.nytimes.com
Is the President a Thoroughly Modern “Progressive” Politician?
by Don Boudreaux on May 4, 2010
in Man of System, Nanny State, Politics
Today at the New York Times’s Bloggingheads, David Frum and Jonah Goldberg debate the question: “Is Obama a Socialist?“ Because of its political toxicity outside of Vermont, the term “socialist” will never be emblazoned on any banner that Mr. Obama chooses to sail beneath. No matter. The President has many of the notions, and suffers from many of the tics, shared by all self-proclaimed socialists. I’m reminded of H.L. Mencken’s thoughts on the question of whether or not labor-union leader John L. Lewis was a communist:
Lewis says that he is not a Communist, and there is no reason to doubt him. He is too hard-boiled a fellow to swallow the puerile rubbish that passes for dialectic among Marxian intellectuals. But all the same he joins in some of their fundamental assumptions, just as he joins in those of the New Deal sorcerers. Especially does he join in the assumption of both outfits that the nation would be vastly benefited if its present scheme could be radically overhauled, and the safeguards now thrown about property eliminated, and all power and prerogative handed over to men of vision, sworn to serve and save the lowly.*
Sounds awfully much like Pres. Obama to me.
* H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956 [1996]), pp. 325-326.
Here’s John Stossel’s sensible take on the matter.
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