Posted on 04/27/2010 8:45:46 AM PDT by Comrade Brother Abu Bubba
Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.
Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.
A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist.
Obama's “cap-and-trade” legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in “carbon trading.” This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.
Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailycrux.com ...
LOL. You and I posted similar thoughts on communism and fascism being effectively the same thing about two minutes apart. You sir, are an inspired man. ;-)
= de jure socialism
Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government.
= de facto socialism = fascism
Agreed! Kinda like figuring out how many angels can fit on a pin.
Corporatist is an old word for fascists that dropped out of use around the 1930s or so. It seems to me that once everyone knew that corporatism was bad and would never accept its totalitarianism, the corporatists changed their name to fascism and said look we're not corporatists, we're fascists. If you change the terminology by creating new words, or redefine old words with insidious new meanings, you can really confuse people which causes disunity amongst the opposition Communists/socialists play this same game too by calling themselves "progressives". Albeit, corporatism, is fascism, is tyranny, and we don't want none of that trash.
Read your post quickly and thought you wrote about Obama: “...he just resorts to buggery.”
Once I realized my error, upon reflection, both are correct.
I think Mark Levin has it right. Obama is a statist which is a more general term than socialist, fascist, communist or the like. In fact, all are types of statist. The important thing to keep in mind is that the differences among socialism, fascism, communism, etc. are not nearly so relevant as the differences between all of them and capitalism, the chief of which, in my mind, is the degree of government control. Capitalism involves far less government control. Unfortunately, how we characterize Obama tends not to be important because the majority a U.S citizens has no idea what any of them mean to them. Notice how the left never refers to the right as capitalists. Instead, they call us intolerant, uncharitable, unable to accept change, wealthy, etc., all terms with negative connotations that the average voter can relate to. Taking a page from their book, I prefer to call the statists suppressors, taxers and spenders, dictators, destroyers of democracy, property confiscators, etc. We must be careful not to call them things like dishonest, corrupt, power hungry and other names because these are traits not unique to statists; they exist everywhere.
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