So far, the analysis of President Obama’s deficit speech has focused largely on its vagaries, obfuscations, and outright lies. Charles Krauthammer rightly blasted Obama’s speech as “shallow … hyper-partisan … intellectually dishonest.” He cited Obama’s “numbers suspended in mid-air with nothing under them with all kinds of goals and guidelines and triggers that mean nothing.” Krauthammer wasn’t alone – many commentators ranging from David Limbaugh to Larry Kudlow have targeted Obama’s woefully un-mathematical statistics, his fiscal magical thinking, and his utter inability to move to the center with regard to deficit reduction.
But the true heart of Obama’s speech wasn’t the faulty budgetary analysis or the demagoguery of attacking Paul Ryan personally. It was Obama’s soaring rhetoric.
Obama is an odd politician. Most politicians see the cloudy phraseology of their speeches as mere throwaway stuff, cotton candy for the simple-minded. Obama sees such gibberish as the soul of his agenda. If we want to examine where Obama truly stands, we must delve into his soaring rhetoric.
And the soaring rhetoric is unvaryingly drawn directly from Saul Alinsky.
As Andrew Breitbart makes clear in his fantastic new book, Righteous Indignation, the father of the contemporary left is Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was an intensely clever fellow with no compunction about exploiting popular sentiment to achieve his ends. One of his favorite methodologies was to use America’s founders to back his own Marxism. As Breitbart writes, “Alinsky’s clever merging of fake founding philosophy with his own Marxism led him to internal contradictions that would have sunk a lesser ego. While championing ‘freedom,’ for example – he hated the idea of individual freedom the Founders loved – he [pushed for] ‘communal freedom,’ which is to say tyranny led by the government.”
Obama was raised in the Alinsky tradition, and he speaks with Alinsky’s forked tongue. Thus, for example, Obama opened his speech by stating that Americans have historically “put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity … we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government.”
So far, so good. But Obama continues: “But there has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.” This is un-American, and it is a lie. American unity doesn’t occur in opposition to free markets, but in defense of them.
This is typical Alinsky. By purposefully confusing principled individualism with principled communitarianism, suggesting that Americans are characterized by both, Obama begins the slow march to fascism. In this section of his speech, Obama essentially turned Americans into corporatists – free marketeers ready, willing, and able to turn over that free market to a well-organized state.
Page 2: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/18/b…st-rhetoric/2/
Pew Research finds that sixty percent of Americans respond negatively to “socialism.” It is clear why President Barack Obama must avoid that label. Words are important. Political candidates who control the language of political discourse win elections.
Most of our elites would certainly not entertain the question: “Is Obama a socialist?” Only irresponsible fanatics carelessly throw around such epithets, they say. Polite circles ignore such goofiness.
As someone who has professionally studied and written about comparative economics, capitalism, and socialism for almost fifty years, the reticence to probe the core beliefs of a political leader seems odd. The question is perfectly legitimate in both an academic and political context as long as we define terms and place the discussion in proper context.
By “socialist,” I do not mean a Lenin, Castro, or Mao, but whether Obama falls within the mainstream of contemporary socialism as represented, for example, by Germany’s Social Democrats, French Socialists, or Spain’s socialist-workers party?
By this criterion, yes, Obama is a socialist.
The socialist parties of Europe trace their origins to reform Marxism. After Marx’s death in 1883, Europe’s Marxists rejected the Bolsheviks’ call for socialist revolution and worked within the political system for Marxist goals. Marxists, such as Karl Leibknecht, August Bebel, Paul Lafargue, Leon Blum, and others, formed the socialist parties that we know today. Most emerged from the trade-union movement, and they retain close ties with organized labor today, as does Obama’s Democrat Party.
Whereas, the eighteenth century liberalism of John Locke and Adam Smith gave us our constitution and limited government, Marxism provided the intellectual foundations of the European welfare state.
The European socialists have their welfare state. Even their conservative opponents no longer question the “social state,” despite rising concern about its affordability. In the United States, we are fighting the battle of the welfare state, and we do not know what the outcome will be.
The European welfare state takes one half of national output to provide state health care, pensions, extended unemployment benefits, income grants, and free higher education. Failed nationalizations taught European socialists to leave enterprise in private hands and coerce it through taxation and regulation to contribute to what the state deems the “social welfare.”
The November 2011 Declaration of Principles of the Party of European Socialists (PES) summarizes the European socialist agenda. I condense its main points and compare them with Obama’s statements and legislative initiatives:
PES: The welfare state and state-provided universal access to education and health care are society’s great achievements.
Obama: Favors universal access to health care and associated benefits as a critical expansion of the welfare state.
Page 2: http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulrode…a-socialist/2/
What comes first, this thread gets 1000 hits or the debt exceeds $16,000,000,000,000?
Is obama a socialist?
For more than half a century, capitalism in the United States has taken a beating from the socialist revolution. Despite the best efforts of conservatives since the Roosevelt era, socialists have made great strides toward converting the nation to socialism. Apparently, the majority of Americans either fail to recognize the transition, or welcome it. The enthusiastic support for Barack Obama, especially among young people, is abundant evidence.
Obama has declared that he believes every person has a “right” to health care. The Socialist Party USA believes every person has a “right” to health care.
Obama believes that labor unions should be allowed to organize without a secret ballot. The Socialist Party USA calls for unions to be recognized without a secret ballot. (Hear Obama’s words here.)
The Socialist Party USA recognizes the “right” of adequate housing for everyone. Obama trained ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) workers to secure mortgages for unqualified people in sufficient numbers to collapse the housing and home-financing industries.
The Socialist Party USA believes that “capitalism is fundamentally incompatible” with socialism. For years, Obama worked in Chicago through the Annenberg Challenge, along with Bill Ayers, to funnel more than $50 million to anti-capitalist education projects. In November 2006, Ayers traveled to Venezuela to speak at Hugo Chavez’s Education Forum where he railed against “the failings of capitalist education,” and praised the “Bolivarian Revolution and the profound reforms in education made by Hugo Chavez.”
The Socialist Party USA believes in open borders and six-months residency as the only requirement for U.S. citizenship. Obama marched with illegal aliens in Chicago in support of “comprehensive” immigration reform. Listen to Obama’s promises to La Raza in 2007.
The Socialist Party USA calls for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Obama says, “I will end this war,” with never a reference to “winning” or “victory.”
The Socialist Party USA calls for the “unconditional disarmament” by the United States. Obama has promised to dramatically reduce defense spending. Listen to his words here.
The Socialist Party USA calls for a “livable guaranteed annual income.” Obama trained ACORN members to conduct “Living Wage” campaigns in cities around the country.
The Socialist Party USA calls for a “steeply graduated” tax policy to redistribute wealth. Obama has promised to increase the tax burden on the rich to redistribute wealth to the poor. He revealed his philosophy when answering a question from Joe the plumber, who complained that he was being taxed for his success. Obama said:
It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.
Click here to read the rest and see the what the hyperlinks offer: http://www.wnd.com/2008/10/78330/You can stand with oil companies, or you can stand with the American people
Oh, this isn’t divisive……………………… then again, Lloyd thrives on this exact tactic…………..
