Obama Rejects Socialism Sobriquet

Barack Obama, Communism, Democrats, Fascism, Political Economy, Republicans, Socialism

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.

MSNBC:

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.”

From “GOP Sticks With Karl (Marx)”:

“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.”

Politicians Respond To Stack Attack

Taxation, Terrorism, The State

“The attack was sad, but the IRS is unnecessary and abolishing the agency would mean ‘a happy day for America.'” That was Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa in response to Joseph Stack’s attack on an office building in Austin, Texas, that housed IRS offices.

King gave another, especially odious federal parasite (who should never be permitted to unionize) a conniption:

National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen Kelley noted that IRS employee Vernon Hunter died in the attack.
“Rep. King’s comments are inappropriate and show an appalling lack of compassion over [Hunter’s] death, as well as a lack of respect for the lives of federal employees nationwide,” said Ms. Kelley in a statement.

Update II: Akio Toyoda Should Have Sat It Out … At Home

Business, Constitution, Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, Liberty, Multiculturalism, Politics, Regulation, Socialism, Technology, War

Help me understand what hitherto no cable commentator has, and I include the formidable Judge Andrew Napolitano: Under what law or warrant does Congress get to summons Toyota executives for an inquisition? I’m curious.

So too is the “U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking documents related to unintended acceleration as well as to Toyota’s disclosure policies and practices,” says this newspaper.

Judge Napoiltano of FoxNews didn’t touch on the legal basis for Congress running interference with Toyota—and even seemed to think the first should put the second on notice.

Shouldn’t the matter of the car manufacturer’s malfunctioning accelerators fall to the courts and those harmed? Shouldn’t the injured parties hammer out a settlement in private or in the courts, rather than before our elected buffoons in Congress?

Personally, if I see one more weak, sobbing American begging for The Regulator and the burdened nation to feel her pain; I’ll explode.

(“Shame on you,” Rhonda Smith, of Sevierville, Tenn., said at a congressional hearing.)

What a nation of spineless crybabies. Get a lawyer, join a class-action lawsuit. Go to Haiti. Cry in private. But spare us your imagined near-death experience as your Lexus got ahead of you.

Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., ought to have reminded the American political ponces of how many of their countrymen he employs and promised politely to fix his company’s problems.

Moreover, Toyoda could have achieved the brevity much-admired in his culture had he borrowed from that clever commie (and rapier sharp wit) Bernard Shaw, who too was forced to decline an invitation from “a collector of social scalps”:

The House Oversight committee’s invitation to Mr. Toyoda: “We will be sitting between four and six o’clock.”

Toyoda: “Akio Toyoda likewise.”

Update I (Feb. 24): Reader “ryan” echoes my thought exactly. Sean and I were discussing the point “ryan” makes. Only in America, were dumbness is elevated to an art, would a vehicle with an ignition key become a self-propelled lethal weapon.

I drive a 2006 Volkswagen GTI, with a high-tech 200-horsepower, 2.0-liter turbocharged engine. The “pocket rocket” has a spectacularly smooth six-speed manual transmission. (I won’t drive an automatic, never have; never will.) If the gas pedal took on a life of its own, I’d automatically—without even thinking—indicate, take the car off the road, put it in neutral and switch off the ignition.

If you can’t do this small thing, ryan is right: you are the lethal weapon, not the vehicle.

As for the comment postulating that Toyota might be in the business of hoodwinking the American buyer: I remind those who profess their love of freedom and markets that such utterances mean that the Demopublican Regulators are winning.

Toyota would not be in business for as long as it has, producing quality cars, if this was its purpose. The car manufacturer relies for its bread and butter on pleasing consumers, not politicians. Profit? Since when is that anything but a blessing? Profits and prices are the street signs of the economy. Without them there is nothing—no incentive to produce and invent and no signal as to when production must be accelerated or decelerated.

Well-taken too are Robert’s observations about the Japanese. Having just traveled to a mystical city named Nara, to do high-tech, Sean would second that. Modernity has not changed this homogeneous nation’s genteel nature.

“Like, what can I get you guys” is not a refrain you’ll hear in a Japanese restaurant. Sean was taken aback by the gentility and graciousness of the Japanese ladies. Sure, the youth sports all the technological and sartorial trappings; but they respect their elders. This makes for a more refined atmosphere. After all, generational demarcations are necessary to ordered liberty.

If you do the polite thing and bow slightly—no need to touch your toes like this guy does—as you enter an establishment, faces light up and the courtesy is more than returned.

I do believe that the US, a multicultural toilet, is working hard to impress upon the Japanese the need to open up their country to immigration.

Update II: To Haym (and others): The comment (hereunder) is completely off-topic and won’t be further pursued on this post. But I suppose Japanese warriors are not supposed to be as ruthless as their American enemy—also the only power to have ever, in the history of mankind, stooped to nuke innocent civilians. When will Americans apply equal thinking to all sides?!