Obama is Leading Us to Socialism?

E-mail, U-Tube entries, conservative websites and cable networks love to accuse President Obama of leading us into socialism.  The truth is socialistic programs are as American as apple pie!  My reply:

OMG, Obama is a Socialist! We are becoming a socialist nation!

In all honesty, those who buy into this rhetoric, probably didn’t do very well in history or government classes as students. Conservatives and the GOP have made socialism a dirty word, when in fact, America has been very comfortable with socialism from the beginning of our republic (not that these chicken-littles have a clue what the difference is between a Democracy, Socialism, Fascism and Communism or what a Republic is). They have demonized the word socialism as much as they did with healthcare reform, with “death panels”, not knowing, of course, that most Americans endorse “living-wills” and end-of-life directives since the advent of Medicare in 1965. Heck, even the great trifurcate of Bush, Rush, Sarah, and even Newt, loved these documents, but after Sarah referred to them as “death panels” (after endorsing it), a great program has now been taken out of the Healthcare Bill. To wit…

1) Back in her half-term as Alaska governor, Sarah Palin spoke out for advance healthcare directives in her 2008 Healthcare Decision Day Proclamation.

2) Rush Limbaugh enthusiastically read ad copy championing LegalZoom.com, whose services include do-it-yourself living wills.

3) Newt Gingrich recently advocated for advance directives (end-of-life planning) in his July 2nd Washington Post column.

4) Most Senate and House Republicans voted to fund counseling for end-of-life issues and care in George W. Bush’s 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. So the widely used end-of life directives and attendant paid-for consultations with your doctor by anyone over the age of 65, has been sabotaged. Nice work GOP!

Hey, “death panels” worked with the non-illuminati before, let’s demonize socialism and thereby attack the most fundamental and long-standing institutions in America.

Premise! What is socialism? Frankly, most people, even the well-educated, would have difficulty defining economic-theory within socialism since there are so many views that even well-known socialists argued over its goals and implementation, but implemented they were. Go ahead to Wikipedia and see if you can parse the varying forms of socialism.

The same goes with the term “democracy”. There is no one simple understanding of it. We are still arguing about how a democracy should be implemented, i.e., states-rights vs. federal-rights vs. re-districting, etc.. Some people want the “government” off the backs off business and totally de-regulated while, at the same time, having no problem with the governments issuing “regulations” in our personal lives such as, abortion, drug use, suicide, etc.

The truth is socialism is as American as apple pie!

So that we have a common understanding of the word “socialism”, let’s use the very safe Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Socialism is:

1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

And what terrible programs have been identified as socialistic in America? Well, let’s use the conservative anti-socialism website, Amarxica.com.

http://www.amarxica.com/pages/programs.html

They have identified the following as socialistic American programs.

Government Worker Programs

Civil Service Retirement Systems

Federal Employee Retirement Systems

Railroad Retirement System

Housing & Urban Development (HUD) Programs

Public Housing

Rental Vouchers & Certificates

Section 8 Housing Vouchers

Shelter Plus Care

Single Room Occupancy

Low Income Home Energy Assistance

Social Security Programs

Social Security (OASDI)

Unemployment Insurance

Temporary Disability Insurance

Medicare

Medicaid

Medicare Prescription Drug Plan (Oops, the GOP and George W, should be ashamed of themselves)

Welfare Programs

Supplemental Security Income

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Food Stamp Program

Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

National School Lunch Program

School Breakfast Program

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Programs That Threaten Liberties in General

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Import Tariffs

Other programs and institutions that are controlled by the government and owned “by the people”, a result of the redistribution of wealth, and funded by the pooling of tax-payer money for the greater good are:

• The VA Hospital (Damn, Abe Lincoln)

• The Post Office (Damn, Ben Franklin!)

• Jails (Damn, the Founding Fathers!)

• State and National Parks (Damn, Teddy Roosevelt)

• Libraries (Ben Franklin was a socialist?)

• Fire Departments (Again, Ben Franklin was a socialist?)

• Roads and freeways (Damn, Eisenhower!)

• Street lights paid by city and state governments

• The U.S. Military (Damn, Jefferson!)

And to make matters worse, socialists have fought for municipalities and cities to own their own waterworks, gas and electric plants, and co-operatives, rather than being gouged by “for-profits”. The outrage!

Obama is leading us to socialism? Hmmmm, it would seem that it has been around a little longer than Obama. Certainly the GOP had no problem with their first TARP program signed into existence by George W., giving the people’s money to corporations and allowing “the people” to have ownership in private institutions, like General Motors and financial institutions. And for bailing them out with “the people’s money”, the government now has a ownership stake and should now rightfully enjoy the profits of our bailout. Wait a minute, who led us into socialism?

You see, governments are formed to handle common societal problems that cannot be handled by individuals.

The truth is, we love our socialistic programs and we love our socialists.

The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance was written by the now well-known Christian Socialist, Francis Bellamy.

Upton Sinclair, a well-known socialist, wrote “The Jungle” which every H.S. student must still read and it, of course, caused such an uproar that the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 was enacted…those damn socialists!

George Orwell’s "1984", another must-read for H.S. students, was a devoted socialist.

Clarence Darrow, Jack London, D. H. Lawrence...the point is, the socialist list is extensive!

At the end of the day, the socialistic mind-sync institutions have been with America since the beginning and they are cherished American institutions. If conservatives want to use the same tactics as they did with “death-panels”, have at it, but our democratic-socialist leaning country has done a pretty good job over the last 200 years, and I do not support those who attack it, hoping that the “simpletons” will trump our country’s finest socialist services and institutions (read community and/or government owned and administered organizations) to win votes for the GOP.

After my research into your question, I guess I should refer to myself as a Democratic-Socialist! I like the idea of pooling our money together for a common-good (“species that run in packs, have a higher survival-rate”) and having our “elected” and “appointed” officials administer them.  Others, would prefer Halliburton, Enron, Washington Mutual, Morgan Stanley, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia Communications, ImClone, Qwest, Country Wide, etc., etc.,…I humbly disagree!  We can vote "out" elected officials; corporations are virtually bullet-proof and have no mandate or charter to support the common good...only make profits for their shareholders.

The good news is that we have been a working Democratic Socialist Republic in action, if not in name, for a long time, unfortunately, their are many who remain clueless to the reality of our American history.