The definition of socialism seems to have advanced to meaning more than just government control over the means of production. It has come to mean big government, government intrusion into the private sector in ways beyond the means of production. Socialism, it turns out, is the big government tyranny that precedes the unreachable Marxist goal of communism.
During the 2008 Presidential Campaign conservative writers were calling the plans of the Democrats, and more specifically the plans of Barack Obama, socialism. Then the cat was let out of the bag when Joe the Plumber got Obama to say in front of the cameras that he supported the "redistribution of wealth," a socialist concept of communitarianism, and one that springs from the belief in the potential of a Marxist Communist Utopia. The redistribution of wealth is brought about by a punitive progressive tax rate that soaks the wealthy in an attempt to redistribute their riches to the huddled masses through entitlement programs and mercantilist schemes. The concept is support by the belief that wealth is finite, and whenever someone becomes wealthier at the top, someone at the bottom loses out. It is the concept behind the old saying, "The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer." The goal is to eventually "eliminate the classes," achieving some kind of equity where nobody is considered above anyone else on the economic ladder. No more possessions, no more currency, and no more differences.
Obama's upbringing, largely exposed by writers like Dinesh D'souza, reveals that the President was heavily influenced by the tenets of Marxism, and those teachings remained steadfast in his personal belief system. Campaign officials, the liberal media, and the talking heads of the Democrat Party called the accusations that Obama was a socialist a smear, and they would have nothing to do with it.
Shortly after President Barack Obama's inauguration, an issue of Newsweek hit the stands proclaiming that "We Are All Socialists Now." The February 16, 2009 cover offered a subtitle reading: "The Perils and Promise of the New Era of Big Government."
What was once claimed to be a smear had quickly become something the Left was proud of.
In many ways our economy already resembles the socialist model, claimed the Newsweek article. Over a hundred years of progressive policies being incrementally slipped into place has moved this nation leftward bit by bit, and step by step. Now, as the cover of Newsweek claimed we had jumped the shark into socialist waters, the liberals of the Democrat Party seemed to believe they had finally achieved their goal. There was no turning back. America had moved enough to the left that they could change the American System at will, without confrontation, without obstacles, and without hesitation. The days of incrementally sneaking in their policies were over, the Democrats assumed, and the Obama administration began proposing as much socialism as they could muster.
Jon Meacham, the author of the article Newsweek's cover proudly displayed, began in large print, "In many ways our economy already resembles a European one. As boomers age and spending grows, we will become even more French."
Sean Hannity was pegged as being one of those conservatives throwing around the "S" word. "John McCain," Mr. Meacham reminded us, "began using it during the presidential campaign." But, argued Meacham, even under a "conservative Republican administration" (he called the Bush presidency "conservative" because that is the language Bush used, not because - at least on the domestic front - George W. Bush acted remotely conservative) the federal government "effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries."
Remember the famous Bush comment that sent conservatives running for the hills from his presidency? "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market."
Meacham was clear, and he seemed to be quite happy about it. "Whether we want to admit it or not. . . the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state."
With the recent three-day weekend, brought to us by Labor Day, we are reminded that the presence of socialism in America is nothing new. Labor Day was created to be the American version of May Day, born in the heart of American labor unrest, but placed in September to separate it from the socialist holiday.
The origins of Labor Day, and the labor movement it represents, come from the perceived battle between the proletariat and the bourgeois - the Marxist concept that encouraged the Bolsheviks to initiate the bloody Russian Revolution. President Grover Cleveland instituted the first national commemoration of Labor Day as an act of penance. The Pullman Strike, a wildcat strike eventually involving around 250,000 workers in 27 States against the railroads, and led by folks like Eugene V. Debs, an actual, card-carrying socialist, resulted in the death of several workers by members of the military brought in to quell the violence. After the violence, Cleveland worked to reconcile with the unions, rushing through Congress a bill making Labor Day a national holiday.
The Founding Fathers recognized that political ideologies like socialism existed, and they specifically designed the United States Government, through the writing of the U.S. Constitution, to safeguard the American people against such destructive concepts of governance. The term for socialist-type philosophies was "utopianism," and the term for the redistribution of wealth was "leveling."
During the early decades of the American experiment, the Jacobins in France were positioning themselves for revolution to take down the French monarchy, and replace it with what they considered to be a more fair and equitable system based on reason, and secularism. Encouraged by the American Revolution, they launched their violent French Revolution, but without the Christian principles, or concepts of individualism and capitalism, that served as a driving force of success in the United States.
Liberals who covet socialism will argue that we are too far down the road. Socialism weaves in and out of our society, and it is only a matter of time before the free market, and capitalism, go down for the count.
Democrats don't see socialism as something evil. They believe it takes a village to make society work right, and that village is personified through the federal government. American socialism, the liberal democrat will argue, is simply the act of having all contribute in order to gain a benefit.
A public library, for example, which is paid for out of your property taxes, is socialistic in nature, the liberal democrat will tell you. Even if you never use the library, you still pay for something you don't use.
Obama will then tell you that to get to that library, or any business, you have to use roads. The roads are needed for the community, and the roads are a community project paid for by taxes imposed by the government. Therefore, the democrat will argue, the roads are socialistic as well. Each driver who purchases gasoline pays a tax to help pay for the road maintenance. The roads benefit the community. Well maintained roads are the epitome of socialism.
A public library, for example, which is paid for out of your property taxes, is socialistic in nature, the liberal democrat will tell you. Even if you never use the library, you still pay for something you don't use.
Obama will then tell you that to get to that library, or any business, you have to use roads. The roads are needed for the community, and the roads are a community project paid for by taxes imposed by the government. Therefore, the democrat will argue, the roads are socialistic as well. Each driver who purchases gasoline pays a tax to help pay for the road maintenance. The roads benefit the community. Well maintained roads are the epitome of socialism.
The argument can then extend to public works projects, law enforcement, and schools. The liberal socialist democrat will argue that we all pay to the government for the common good, making all of those things quite socialist.
We all, like it or not, according to the liberal left democrats, contribute to the socialist state, and without those contributions, society would crumble.
We all, like it or not, according to the liberal left democrats, contribute to the socialist state, and without those contributions, society would crumble.
Fine. Nice little argument. Except the argument the liberal left uses is wrong.
Supporting the community does not make you a socialist, and the community working together through local government is hardly socialistic in nature. In fact, conservatives believe in supporting their community through their own voluntary choice, and through local government.
There is a separation between a central federal government, and local government. And "community" through one's voluntary, individual choice, or through local government, is not the same as communitarianism through a central government where statists place the community above individual choice.
The U.S. Constitution, in fact, took all of these factors into consideration. To protect Americans from socialism, the principles of limited government were applied. The central federal government was granted only a few authorities, and those authorities granted were primarily for the purpose of protecting, promoting, and preserving the union. All other authorities were reserved to the States and local governments. That is why Romneycare in Massachusetts, despite the fact that it was bad policy, was constitutional, and Obamacare at the federal level is not. To put such a program into place at the local level is the local government exercising its local authorities. If the policy fails, the entire nation is not subjected to it, and the States learn from watching each other. That is how innovation is achieved. The States are like little labs trying different policies that may work, and may not work.
The federal government, however, is not granted the authority to intrude upon the health insurance industry, or health care, as a whole. There is no place in the Constitution that grants such an authority. When a central government can do such a thing, which can eventually take away any choice to use private insurance throughout the country, it is more than just a local government exercising its local authorities. It is a central system forcing local systems to comply to a national mandate. Then, the central government has the opportunity to increase its control, eventually compromising the individualism of the States, and imposing central mandates that are indeed socialistic in nature.
This is what sets our system apart from any other political system around the world, and in history. Our States are sovereign, autonomous entities. The States can be different, and that is okay. The Founding Fathers did not want the federal government forcing the States to conform to a national mandate of uniformity. The federal government was not formed to control the States, as some liberals may suggest.
By allowing the States to be different, to exercise their States' Rights, it provides more choice to the citizens. When your State does something you don't like, you have a choice - you can fight to change it, put up and shut up, or vote with your feet and move to a State that conforms to your wishes.
If the federal government does something you don't like, you don't have the choice to vote with your feet, and that is a loss of freedom.
That is why the federal government is not supposed to be involved in local issues. That is why there is no authority for the federal government to fund libraries, public works projects, local law enforcement, roads, or schools. Any federal funding into those things is unconstitutional. The Founding Fathers expected the States to take care of those issues, in order to keep the federal government out of the States' business, and focus on federal authorities like the common defense, securing the national border, running the post offices, protecting the copyrights and patents of Americans, protecting our trade routes, and handling international issues (to name a few).
In fact, in 1817, President James Madison vetoed a public works bill that would ensure federal funding for various public works projects, including roadways and boatways. The Father of the Constitution vetoed the bill because it was unconstitutional. Roads, for example, are the responsibility of the States. There is no authority expressly enumerated in the Constitution giving the federal government the power to fund highways and roads.
For the federal government to fund these things, and use highway funding to extort the States (as they did regarding the national speed limit, and a uniform drinking age), is a kind of governance the Founding Fathers did not desire. Enabling the federal government to start getting involved in local issues is dangerous to our freedom, and sends us in the direction of socialism - a failed system that even now has European nations on the verge of collapse.
The liberals are right, we are more socialist now than ever before. We have been incrementally guided into a model rapidly becoming like the one used across the Atlantic Ocean. President Obama has accelerated that process of fundamentally transforming the United States into a socialist nation. But just because the socialists have been successful in getting us this far, it does not mean that finishing the job is a good idea.
Watching the failure of the European nations, you would think the liberal democrats would realize the failure of socialism, and work with us to turn this nation around. You would think they would see the increasing number of failures in Europe and cry out like the rest of us that it is time to get back to the Constitution.
The liberal left socialist democrats don't see the failures of socialism, and they don't want to recognize the failures of the political philosophy for the purpose of the betterment of America. Apparently, they don't care about a bright future for America. Their destructive agenda, and the governmental power that comes with it, is more important to them than the safety and prosperous future of this nation.
I wonder if they have considered, as they give the government more and more power with their liberal policies, what would happen if someone they don't consider benevolent got control of the nation? Would they really want someone like that to hold the kind of power they are building at the federal level? Would they give the power they are accumulating at the federal level willingly to someone like Bush?
If that kind of unfettered power at the federal level is dangerous to give to someone they don't like, then why would it be a good thing to give that kind of power to anybody else?
Remember, the Constitution was written with the philosophy that power at the federal level must be limited.
The Founding Fathers realized we needed a lion to protect the union. But lions eat you, so they also ensured that the lion they fashioned as the federal government was properly caged and restrained by the chains of the Constitution to protect the people from it ever becoming a socialist tyranny.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
We Are All Socialists Now - Newsweek
James Madison Veto of Public Works Bill, March 3, 1817 - Constitution.org
Federal Extortion of States Continues with Bail-Out of States Attempt - Political Pistachio
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