The truth is that Republicans, who keep pelting BO with the socialism sobriquet, have advanced the same interventionist principles, but because Republicans, pols and pundits, do not know how to define socialism, they get away with claiming their party’s Third-Way interventionism is qualitatively different to that of the Dem’s.
However, the species of socialism advanced by both parties exists on a continuum; it differs quantitatively only.
President Barack Obama launched a vigorous defense of his economic agenda Wednesday, rejecting critics who call his policies “socialism” and insisting he aims to boost U.S. competitiveness abroad.
His aim He proclaim has “less to do with big government or small government than it does smart government.”
“Strictly speaking, socialism implies state ownership of the means of economic production. But … ‘state-directed sharing of the wealth’ is also part of the socialist scheme. A scheme both Republicans and Democrats have overseen energetically and with matching commitment.
The American economic system is a mixture of free-market capitalism and socialism, with dollops of fascism added for good measure. ‘Fascism,’ wrote the Tannehills in The Market for Liberty, is a system in which the government leaves nominal ownership of the means of production in the hands of private individuals but exercises control by means of regulatory legislation and reaps most of the profit by means of heavy taxation.’ …
A great deal of this boils down to deceptive semantics—and a society that has accepted the attendant, underlying, socialistic precepts.”
Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) joined five Republicans and 57 Democrats in voting to proceed on a $15 billion, so-called jobs-creation measure, which incorporates “extensions of unemployment insurance and COBRA health benefits,” reports the WaPo.
This is an informal poll; it’s not a well-controlled one. Out of 10,000 conference attendees, approximately 2500, very motivated Paulites voted, which means that they might have slanted the outcomes. On the other hand, it is quite possible that the Tea Party element has assumed control of the conservative movement.
Will they see to it that the bums and their statist sycophants—the Bill Bennetts, Ann Coulters, Rush Limbaughs of the world—are tossed out and replaced with strict Constitutionalists such as Peter Schiff and Rand Paul?
Perhaps as the republic tanks, the people are finally rising…
Update I: Glenn Beck commences the keynote address, and declares: “The Republicans have not had that come-to-Jesus moment.” And: “I am a Republican and I have a problem”—this moment of GOP contrition and recognitions has not transpired, says Beck.
About the Republicans’ quest for that Big Tent: “What is this, a circus?”
My version: “If the Republicans don’t stop their love affair with idiots, it’s not a bigger tent they’ll be seeking, but a giant tin-foil hat.”
At this stage, Beck has descended into America boosterism. The evening is young. Let us hope he does not waste the opportunity to substantially bash the GOP and zero in on economics, monetary policy; in other words, deliver some Paul pearls.
Glenn: “To restore America, we need less Marx and more Madison.”
Finally a fleeting Beck Breakthrough: “We don’t need to export democracy; the best example to the world is to lead by example.” But short lived. He fails to return to this vital point.
Beck then makes a huge historical and philosophical faux pas reading the progressive Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” as if hers were the richly textured words of a Thomas Jefferson. Lazarus was a progressive interloper, whose sonnet ushered in all the maxims of mass immigration we’ve come to know.
Update II: Beck’s address was not the stuff of tea parties. He hit all those soaring notes the sentimental yentas on his show and in his audiences love to hear. But as for substance: he gets an “F.”
Update IV (Feb. 21): Hours after we reported it here on BAB, CNN joins a growing chorus among MSM in acknowledging That This Is News: “Rep. Ron Paul surprise winner of CPAC presidential straw poll.” Whoever asserted that the “the 74-year old libertarian hero” would be in his 80s in two years was sprouting nonsense on stilts. Paul will be young enough to dismantle whole departments; dismiss large sections of the oink sector, and allow us all to begin breathing life into the economy again.
Update V (Feb 22): “The small Beltway Politburo that runs CPAC is worried,” writes Tom Tancredo at WND.COM:
the Beltway Politburo strives to demonstrate their superior cleverness by undermining the grass-roots consensus. On two key issues, CPAC offered detours and blind alleys, not leadership…
Whereas grass-roots conservatives and millions of 912 patriots – along with 80 percent of the American people – understand the need for border security as a precondition for immigration reform, CPAC board member Grover Norquist is busy launching a new project in support of the Obama administration’s plan to grant another amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens. Neither border control nor immigration enforcement was included as a topic for any of the CPAC general sessions.
It’s official. Glenn Beck gets his own category/archive on Barely A Blog. He deserves it. In addition to his other attributes—you can now track my analysis of Beck’s progression as a force for liberty by clicking on the BAB Beck category—he is the only conservative, mainstream TV commentator to treat Bush with the contempt he reserves for Obama.
The tirade against “W” begins 3 minutes or so into the broadcast.
“Debt, spending; this was insane what G. W. Bush was doing. Spending us into oblivion. National security. How about you declare a war and fight to win? How about you secure our borders? … Some people wanted global warming. The rest of us wanted us out of the Middle East; use our own energy. The Republicans had a crack at it, but what did we get? GB, in his last year, lost 3 million jobs. Debt. Spending: How about $4.9 trillion? He increased discretionary spending almost 50 percent. Fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2000: Bush almost spent double than President Clinton. And who can forget the $550 billion prescription drug fiasco? He abandoned the free-market system to save it with a $700 billion TARP slush fund. … The border was left wide open. Corruption was rife. Oh, and global warming: the biggest schemes of all times not only supported by Republicans, but by leading Republicans. Lindsey Graham,Tim Pawlenty,John McCain. All pro cap-and-trade.
One of the reasons a volume like The Real Lincoln is so sound is that it does NOT refute historical facts; most historians agree about what transpired during the War of Northern Aggression; it’s the interpretation of these fact.
With Diablo it boils down to deciding matters of natural law: did the states create the union or vice versa (dah Diablo)? Was secession legitimate” Is it right to sic brother on brother so as to coerce the one to remain with the other? Suspend the Bill or Right?
The “Church of Lincoln” says “Yes” to all; we who are with liberty say NO.
A reminder that I’m not adjudicating Lincoln in this post; but Beck’s progress toward the founders’ freedoms. It’s one step forward, two steps back with Beck.
“We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.”
Update III (Feb. 18): This post went off-topic, because some would rather rehash their convictions despite the answers provided. So, in reply to,”Do you believe those 500 million people form a serious military threat against which we must defend ourselves?”
For one, there are about 1 billion Muslims in the world. In the previous post, I replied to the same question. I’m reproducing the update:
Polls show a respectable percentage of Muslims condone Jihadi pursuits (search for some fresh data; I like those). If equaled by as many Jews and Christians, liberals and libertarians and elements on the American Right always helping to make the “Islamikazes'” case would protest as loud as you lot squealed over placing a bug in Abu Zubaydah’s cage. Hence the issue of fifth-column immigrants.
Back in 2005, “a leaked Whitehall dossier revealed that affluent, middle-class, British-born Muslims were signing up to Al-Qaida in droves. Translated into official speak by Timesonline, only ‘3,000 British-born or British-based people have passed through Osama Bin Laden’s training camps.’
And if that doesn’t allay unwarranted fears, ‘Intelligence indicates that the number of British Muslims actively engaged in terrorist activity, whether at home or abroad or supporting such activity, is extremely small and estimated at less than 1%.'”
In other words, 16,000 homicidal sleepers are loose in England!
These figures, of course, probably replicable in the US, are statistically significant—stupendously so—given the barbarism they portend. It is over this sort of astoundingly consequential number that our liberal-minded readers are jumping for joy.
