Socialist or Fascist

Thomas Sowell

It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a "socialist." He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism.

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous -- something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.

Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies.

The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations.

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot -- and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.

What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people -- like themselves -- need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.

The left's vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that begins, "We the People..."

That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get the Constitution's limitations on government loosened or evaded by judges' new interpretations, based on notions of "a living Constitution" that will take decisions out of the hands of "We the People," and transfer those decisions to our betters.

The self-flattery of the vision of the left also gives its true believers a huge ego stake in that vision, which means that mere facts are unlikely to make them reconsider, regardless of what evidence piles up against the vision of the left, and regardless of its disastrous consequences.

Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/06/12/socialist_or_fascist/page/full

AFTER OBAMACARE

AFTER OBAMACARE

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, HILLARY CLINTON, OBAMACARE

During the Clinton hour of the Democratic infomercial on CNN in Columbus earlier this month, the moderator called on victim of Obamacare. Office manager Teresa O’Donnell told Clinton about how her monthly costs for health care insurance for her family of four went from $490 to $1,081 a month. “I know Obama told us that we’d be paying a little more. But doubling, over doubling, my health insurance cost has not been ‘a little more.’ It has been difficult to come up with that kind of payment every month. I would like to vote Democratic, but it’s cost me a lot of money, and I’m just wondering if Democrats really realize how difficult it’s been on working-class Americans to finance Obamacare?” O’Donnell asked.

Ms. O’Donnell to the contrary notwithstanding, Obama actually promised that Obamacare would lower premiums by an average of $2500 per family. It was one of the several core promises Obama made to cram the law down our throats. Each one of the promises was a calculated lie. O’Donnell must have missed that, but she certainly asked a good question.

Clinton struggled to answer the question. In order to buy some time she first quizzed O’Donnell about her coverage. Then she unspooled a run-on sentence of Faulknerian length. “OK, well, first of all let me say, I very much want to get the cost down and that is going to be my mission because I do think that for many, many people, but there are exceptions, like what you’re telling me, having the Affordable Care Act has reduced cost, has created a real guarantee of insurance, because if you’d had a pre-existing condition under the old system you wouldn’t have gotten affordable insurance, so it’s done a lot of really good things, but it has become increasingly clear that we’re going to have to get the cost down,” she said.

Are price controls and the consequences they entail in the future under Madam Hillary?

The video below has Chelsea Clinton decrying the “crushing costs” of Obamacare. She reports that Madam Hillary is open to using “executive action” to reduce “crushing costs” of Obamacare. The video appears to be taken at an event with the camera turned to the audience rather than Chelsea, but her voice is clearly audible.

The video picks up with “…cap on out of pocket expenses. This was part of my mom’s original plan back in ’93 and ’94, as well as premium costs.” The two go together. Otherwise a cap on out of pocket expenses would simply require higher premiums. Capping both will make private insurance unprofitable and lead to the imposition of the Bernie Objective.

Chelsea’s exposition continues: “We can either do that directly or through tax credits. And, kind of figuring out whether she could do that through executive action, or she would need to do that through tax credits working with Congress. She thinks either of those will help solve the challenge of kind of the crushing costs that still exist for too many people, who even are part of the Affordable Care Act and buying insurance…”

It’s a preview of coming attractions under the Clinton administration. Ed Morrissey elaborates in “We gotta fix Obamacare’s crushing costs says…Chelsea Clinton.” The Daily Mail reads the entrails in “Chelsea Clinton attacks Obamacare’s ‘crushing costs’ and hints her mother would change Democrats’ key policy.”

 

 

Via Shoshanna Weissman/Weekly Standard.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/03/after-obamacare-2.php

THE NEW DARK AGES ON CAMPUS

THE NEW DARK AGES ON CAMPUS: In the new issue of Commentary, K.C.Johnson writes:

In the narrative offered by the mainstream media—and by the participants themselves—last fall’s campus protests exposed the continuing structural racism in the nation’s colleges and universities. To rectify this purported problem, the protesters demanded that administrators punish students who publicly challenged their beliefs; the right to join sympathetic faculty in dictating the curricular choices of all other students; and the authority to vet new faculty hires, thereby ensuring increased conformity of thought on diversity issues. Administrators should have responded to these intolerant demands by reminding all concerned that institutions of higher learning that abandon academic freedom no longer have a reason to exist. But recent developments, especially during the Obama administration, have made colleges uniquely ill suited to defend ideals of openness and civil liberties. And in any case, most faculty and administrators seem to share the protesters’ desire for universities dominated by a never-ending pursuit of diversity. In this respect, the protesters deserve thanks for unwittingly exposing the public to the increasingly hollow core of the contemporary academy.

Read the whole thing. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that narrative is correct. If so, why are Democrat controlled institutes such intolerant cesspits of racism, as Glenn likes to say?

22

Posted at 4:20 pm by Ed Driscoll

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/229923/

Don's Tuesday Column

           THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   3/29/2016

              Media and non-Trump stories

A few things may have slipped by your awareness over the last week. News media have obsessed over the Republican food/mud fight, which I primarily lay at the feet of Mr. Trump and the conduct of his (non-presidential, in tone) campaign. By the way, would it surprise you to know that, of all the coverage of Republicans for the month of February, a 50.4 percent majority of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news time went to Donald Trump, with Rubio, Cruz, Bush and Kasich receiving about 18, 17, 8 and 3 percent respectively? That amounts to over 3 hours for Trump and 171 minutes for the next 3 combined.

I ascribe it partly to media agenda—they might consider nominee Trump to be a sure-fire future gusher for attack journalism in service to the Democrat candidate (apparently Hillary Clinton). Also, to crafty, successful manipulation by the media-savvy Trump, of the nearly-unquenchable thirst for low-ball, low hanging news feeds. “Ask yourself whether you think the media’s lopsided coverage of Donald Trump has the Republican Party’s best interests in mind.” (Steven Hayward)

I see it all as thinly veiled, in-kind contributions to Obama’s third term. Consider the implications of the fact that “Network News Loves Covering Trump but Not His Liberal Past,” (Rich Noyes, 03/04). Has the mainstream news media given Republicans an excusable motive for supporting someone who, if his past positions, affiliations and contributions were to stand alone, would not get even a second look as a standard-bearer? Of those 187 minutes of Trump coverage, only 4 minutes from all three networks focused on Trump’s ideology. Hmm.

Among the news items given relative short shrift by the Trump “reality show” campaign coverage are: new aspects of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal showing that convenience and secrecy drove her choices, Obamacare’s ongoing crash-and-burn, and Emperor Obama’s cozying up to Cuban and South American dictators. We had knee-jerk descriptions of Juan Castro as a  (fill-in-the-blank-title) non-dictator; we heard apologies for the CIA’s involvement with the overthrow of Chile’s communist dictator-in-the-making, Salvador Allende, by General Pinochet. It was a top-to-bottom “sympathy for the (leftist) devils” trip by Obama.

From Wikipedia (under Salvador Allende): “As president, Allende adopted a policy of nationalization of industries and collectivization; due to these and other factors, increasingly strained relations between him and the legislative and judicial branches of the Chilean government—who did not share his enthusiasm for socialization—including the Christian Democrats, whose support had enabled Allende’s election, denounced his rule as unconstitutional and called for his over throw by force.” There is not one example of successfully implemented widespread prosperity under socialism—only poverty, economic devastation and death.

Allende’s policies were and are the hallmarks of dictatorial communist/socialist rule, just like Chavez’s/Maduro’s Venezuela. Only brute force and armed might can 1) take from private ownership that which the private sector has built (Chile’s industries and Venezuela’s oil companies) and 2) impose despotic collective economic models on a nation’s populace.

Cuba’s sad, impoverished state exists solely due to communist rule by the Castro brothers, whose jails have held, and continue to hold, political prisoner populations proportionally rivaling any other dictatorial socialist worker’s “utopias.” Obama’s attitude? By any observation, it can only be described as mildly bothered, if at all.

“Cuban dissident leader Antonio Rodiles spoke to Mike Gonzalez about President Obama’s trip to Castro’s socialist paradise: ‘Even if Obama’s speech galvanizes some brave Cubans to demand their rights, the Castro Praetorian guard will crush them with impunity. We know this because that happened while Obama was in Cuba. Sources on the island said some Cubans gathered spontaneously after the speech to demand the rights enumerated in it, only to be brutally repressed by the Castro security forces. Yet the president not only did not leave in protest, but he failed to voice any objections or even mention it, at least publicly.

“‘Indeed, during the three days of the Obama visit, dissidents were beaten, arrested, dragged through streets, stripped naked, and threatened with the rape of their daughters. Dissident leader Antonio Rodiles, himself beaten and detained on Monday along with his wife, told me the Obama visit had occasioned a festival of repression.’”

If this moves you, look up “Carlos Eire: The Speech Never Given,” Powerlineblog.com. Rejected by the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Yale history professor’s piece is a devastating refutation of Obama’s happy talk and mild support for the Castros' Marxist rule.

Also at Powerlineblog.com and well worth your time, is “Obama on Freedom vs. Totalitarianism—Whatever Works,” under the “Communism” label. In addition to a much-photographed tango dance, Obama had some words of encouragement for a Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative meeting. “During his remarks, Obama stumbled through an embarrassing discourse on ‘capitalism vs. communism.’ The would-be leader of what used to be called the Free World treated the issue as just another false choice…

“Obama instructed his young listeners that the question isn’t this system vs. that system, but rather ‘what works.’ In Cuba, he claimed (falsely), communism is working great when it comes to health care…(free) markets tend to generate wealth, though they must be heavily regulated.” To Obama-crat leftists, however, there is no limiting principle to any regulations. Problems stemming from regulation always necessitate further onerous rule-making. And so on.

OBAMA’S RANSOM DIPLOMACY

OBAMA’S RANSOM DIPLOMACY

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN IRAN, OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY

When Iran freed five American hostages in January, President Obama was hailed by many in the mainstream media for his skillful diplomacy. However, more sober analysts, most notably Arthur Herman, wondered whether the Obama administration had, in effect, paid a ransom for the release of the Americans.

The sense that this was a gussied up case of ransom payment, rather than clever diplomacy, arose not from the $100 billion or so that Team Obama had bestowed on the mullahs through the nuclear deal. By January, this was, effectively, a sunk cost.

Rather, the ransom narrative was fueled by a new sweetener — a $1.7 billion settlement on claims relating to the sale of military equipment to Iran before the 1979 revolution, in the time of the Shah. This claim was for $400 million, the amount of money in a trust fund the U.S. apparently seized. The $1.7 billion settlement includes $1.3 billion in “interest.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo immediately voiced his concern about the payment. In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, he asked: “What is the relationship between the $1.7 billion payment and the release of the hostages?” Pompeo also noted that at least one top Iranian official had described the payment as “a bid to buy freedom of [U.S.] spies held by Tehran”.

It took the State Department two months to reply. And the reply came not from Kerry, but from an assistant secretary for legislative affairs.

Herman describes the State Department’s letter as “a masterpiece of prevarication, obfuscation, and devious misdirection — and a revealing example of how the Obama administration not only treats Congress but systematically evades responsibility for its own actions.” It attempts to blame the payment on President Reagan, who in 1981 agreed to the creation of the Iran–U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague.

Reagan’s goal was to set up a mechanism through which American nationals, especially the hostages seized by Iran, might one day receive compensation. Not surprisingly, there has been no compensation from Iran.

Iran has sought to use the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal to vindicate its claim, among others, that the U.S. owes Iran $400 million plus interest in connection with arms transactions with the Shah. As with compensation for the hostage taking, this claim has gone nowhere.

But suddenly, Obama agreed to pay the mullahs $1.7 billion without any formal decision by the Tribunal. Why?

According to Herman, the letter doesn’t dispute that the U.S. did so in exchange for the release of hostages. Given the timing of the payment, and the letter’s acknowledgement that the payment was made in a behind-closed-doors settlement as a way to avoid letting the Tribunal formally decide the case, the connection is clear.

Iran has additional claims before the Tribunal. It also has additional American hostages, Robert Levinson and Siamak Namazi (Iran claims not to know where Levinson is). Thus, we should probably expect additional ransom payments by Obama.

Bowing to and enriching dictators is what passes for American diplomacy in the Age of Obama. It’s the only kind the president is good at.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/03/obamas-ransom-diplomacy.php

OBAMA ON FREEDOM VS. TOTALITARIANISM — WHATEVER WORKS

OBAMA ON FREEDOM VS. TOTALITARIANISM — WHATEVER WORKS

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN BARACK OBAMA, COMMUNISM, CUBA,FREEDOM

President Obama didn’t just tango during his visit to Argentina. He also addressed a Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative meeting.

During his remarks, Obama stumbled through an embarrassing discourse on “capitalism vs. communism.” The would-be leader of what used to be called the Free World treated the issue as just another false choice, sort of the way he used to speak of Red States and Blue States before he figured out that the dichotomy was central to his election and reelection.

Obama seems to have been nervous during this presentation. At times, his hand gestures resembled those of the person who was translating for the deaf.

I guess the question of capitalism vs. communism is a puzzler for this president. Or maybe he was just embarrassed by what was coming out of his mouth. If not, he should have been.

Obama instructed his young listeners that the question isn’t this system vs. that system, but rather “what works.” In Cuba, he claimed (falsely), communism is working great when it comes to health care. On the other hand, he acknowledged, the country looks like it’s stuck in the 1950s.

The lesson, said Obama, is that markets tend to generate wealth. Thus, they meet his “does it work” test, though they must be heavily regulated. Such is the wisdom imparted by this (once-thought-by many-to-be) towering intellect.

Scandalously, the only argument Obama was willing to make in favor of freedom is its tendency to generate wealth. If communism produced just as much, apparently it would be just as good or better, given the more even distribution of the wealth it purports to produce.

To argue in favor of freedom as a good in itself would, in Obama’s thinking, mean succumbing to ideology. He is much too cool for that.

I infer that during the heyday of the Soviet Union, Obama might well have been a communist. Then it was thought, based on successful propaganda of the kind some now accept when it comes to health care in Cuba, that communism was working fine.

I also infer that Obama may well be a fan of the current Chinese regime. Until recently, many thought it was working quite well.

As for the U.S., Obama’s crude pragmatism militates in favor of some reliance of free markets. However, this doesn’t mean that socialist or communist solutions should be ruled out. It depends on the particular problem your addressing, Obama told his young audience.

Because freedom isn’t a big deal in an of itself, Obama’s “pragmatism” militates in favor of — for example — telling people what kinds of communities they must live in. On such matters, government diktat will “work” better than freedom in producing the kinds of neighborhoods Obama favors.

Obama doesn’t want to kill the Golden Goose of free markets. He just wants to put it in a cage with as little sunlight as is consistent with the continued laying of eggs. And he hopes we will overlook the fact that the eggs are losing their luster.

Obama’s entire speech is below. His remarks regarding capitalism vs. communism begin at around the 41:00 minute mark.

32http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/03/obama-on-freedom-vs-totalitarianism-whatever-works.php

Obama Needs to Get Over His Self-Serving Guilt Trip

POTUS should read some honest, non-Leftist comparative history

By Austin Bay 

President Barack Obama and National Security Advisor Susan Rice receive an update on the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium on March 22.(Photo: Pete Souza/The White House via Getty Images)

The slaughter in Brussels is another reminder that our violent Islamist terrorist enemies are fighting a sustained, generational campaign of global, imperialist conquest.

One of President Barack Obama’s first dishonest acts was dropping the name Global War on Terror. Obama the Peacemaker substituted bureaucratic lingo, dubbing our long war an OCO—an Overseas Contingency Operation.

9-11. Fort Hood. San Bernardino. Chattanooga. It’s past time for the president to acknowledge his obvious and stupid mistake. America is a battlefield; the war is not just overseas. More importantly, if successful leadership is one of Mr. Obama’s presidential goals, there is nothing “contingent” about the war. The war is quite real. Our enemies wrath and goals are unconditional.

For the record, I never liked the name Global War on Terror, though it served. In fall 2001 I suggested Millennium or Millennial War.  I thought we were in a long haul war for the terms of modernity.

We are engaged in such a war, fighting enemies who believe the future lies in unconditionally restoring their imperialist past.

When the vast majority of Earth’s oppressed get a chance to vote with their feet, the destination isn’t Mosul or Moscow, it’s Manhattan or Miami.

For the moment, ISIL jihadists have assumed Al Qaeda’s mantle of global leadership in a global war to secure a global caliphate. From their rump caliphate in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, and its provinces in Yemen and Libya, ISIL’s caliph and his commanders direct political policies which include enslavement, mass rape, the mass murder of  minority ethnic groups like Yazidis and Berbers, mass murder of Arab Christians and non-Arab Middle Eastern Christians and mass murder of Shia Muslims. ISIL-affiliates take the slaughter beyond the Middle East and Europe. Boko Haram terrorists rape and enslave Nigerian Christian girls. They have also murdered thousands of Nigerians who oppose them, whether Christian, Muslim or animist.

Mass murder as policy is—well, it’s genocide. However, it took the reluctant, stalling, begrudging Obama Administration two bloody years to acknowledge that ISIL’s calculated killers are genocidaires. (Historical footnote: Mr. Obama and his UN ambassador, Samantha Power, were part of the political mob calling George W. Bush a moral failure for failing to stop the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.) For his part, President Obama constantly bewails the guilt of Western imperialists and Crusaders and American chattel slavery and exploitation and, of course, George W. Bush. Mr. Obama employs this guilt narrative as a domestic political tool and occasionally in foreign affairs.

Mr. Obama needs to get the hell over his self-serving guilt trip and get serious about stopping 21st century genocidal imperialism.

ISIL and Al Qaeda are both contemporary, unapologetic, genocidal imperialist powers. Islam’s successful 7th century imperialism, the expansion of Muslim power from Spain to Persia, is their model.  Al Qaeda recruited on its radical message and then its initial imperial “success” of 9/11. ISIL’s May-June 2014 offensive (the one that seized Mosul and took truck-borne ISIL fighters to the outskirts of Baghdad) was an imperialist offensive that also served as a recruiting tool. First Al Qaeda and now ISIL want the “green map” of Muslim authority and Sharia Law to cover the entirety of Planet Earth.

Violent Islamist theoreticians (for example, Sayid Qutb) blame the Muslim decay that began in the 13th century on evil external actors (Mongol, Iranian, Turkish, European) and the moral failure of Muslims to adhere to “the true faith” as practiced by Mohammad’s immediate followers (Salafis). OK, history went wrong—but ISIL’s violent Islamists will correct it, with bombs, mass murder and their interpretation of the truth faith.

Does Mr. Obama’s American guilt shtick reinforce the Islamists’ evil external propaganda? Yes.

So Mr. Obama damn well needs to read some honest, non-Leftist comparative history—then stop his guilt shtick. Examples of American excess and silliness abound, but examples of American success and largesse are even more abundant. This fact sticks in the throat of America’s enemies and the throats of a lot of left-wing U.S. professors: When the vast majority of Earth’s oppressed get a chance to vote with their feet, the destination isn’t Mosul or Moscow, it’s Manhattan or Miami.

Pray that Obama finally snaps to that fact, then gets serious about crushing ISIL’s caliphate.

http://observer.com/2016/03/obama-needs-to-get-over-his-self-serving-guilt-trip/