A Simple Question
Posted by TFG on April 15th, 2008
At what point are we allowed to call him a socialist?
He’s part of a long movement that has adopted some of the tools of socialism in an effort to make society better, with decidedly mixed results. [...]
Again, this is mostly, if not all, well-intentioned. [...]
Ideally, we’d be discussing the policy preferences of the candidates and their likely consequences rather than bandying about silly labels. But that’s not how the game is played.
Lookie here…if you ‘adopt[ed] some of the tools of the socialism’, you are simply a socialist. You can’t be a capitalist with a broad mind, or any other -ist…you are a socialist. These are absolutes. If they’re not, we got none, and we might as well skip the whole thing, and just straight into Idiocracy.
And never mind pointing out, unnecessarily, MOST unnecessarily, that they have had ‘decidely mixed results.’ ‘Decidedly mixed results’ is the nice way of saying ‘failure that cost a lot of people a lot of money.’ Well-intentioned or not, those random unnamed socialistic tools are a failure, and they’ve proven so, time after time after time. Refusing to call it such is just childishly political gamesmanship, which I get accused of next.
I’m personally not playing any kind of game with this. You Beltway types can sit around in your parlors and discuss policy preferences all damn day long. Me, I’m much more interested in passing on an American way of life that seems to slipping under the surface of policy preferences and good intentions and mixed results. I’ll be damned if I let a Marxist slide into the White House without raising my voice about it.
Via Instantman…
April 16th, 2008 at 4:25 am
If one policy makes you a socialist, does opposing that policy, by your same rules, make one a libertarian?
April 16th, 2008 at 5:22 am
I don’t know. I haven’t formulated a rule-set for libertarians.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:38 am
TFG,
I’d agree with you if we were choosing between a soft socialist (Obama) and a capitalist. But we ain’t. McCain’s a socialist, too, by your standard. So’s Bush. Heck, even Reagan talked about “safety nets.”
I think Obama’s more of a socialist than McCain. But that’s a matter of weighing their policies. And both advocate some pretty bad policies.
“Decidedly mixed results” isn’t a shorthand for “abject failure.” Social Security, Medicare, and various other socialist-lite policies have brought a lot of people out of poverty. They’ve also taken a lot of freedom away from people who would have been responsible enough to invest in their own retirement and health care more wisely and profitably.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:13 am
You went too far with socialism. What you should have said about its record is that its a ‘failure that cost a lot of people‘. More people died at the hands of the gummint in the USSR than the holocaust.
And actually, McCain, Bush and Reagan were progressive/fascist, while Obama is actually more socialist/communist.
April 16th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
James, I probably agree with you on McCain, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop, nor would I advocate that anyone do so. If we are electing socialists, we need to be saying so, don’t you think? I promise I’ll rip on McCain at the right time, but for now, BNMIO is just egregiously bad.
I’ll take your word on it for the ‘not abject failures.’
April 16th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Every year the government gets larger. Every year peple think things are getting worse. Cause and effect or am I just confusing correlation with causation?
What does it matter whether our president is an explicit socialist or not? Democrats embrace the tenets of socialism. Republicans will emulate Democrats to keep power. Congress, as exemplified by Senator Stevens and Congressman Murtha, are openly corrupt and no one seems to give a damn. The Supreme Court has decided that the word no means yes when it comes to free speech and that the government can take your property for any goddamn reason it chooses, including funding the coffers of those who fund them.
The core beliefs that sustained us through all the difficulties, hypocrises, conflicts, and contradictions that are inherent in any and every system of human endeavor are being abandonded in the name of diversity, multicultualism, and tribalism. As I fly over this country, walk the streets of our big cities, or stroll down a fairway at Pinehurst, I remain amazed at what has been accomplished and worry about its fragility. I have bitches and observations, but few answers.