The government effectively owns General Motors and controls Chrysler, and the president is deciding what kind of cars they can make. Uncle Sam owns majority stakes in American International Group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and controls large chunks of the banking industry. Also, President Obama wants government to take over the business of student loans. And he\u2019s pushing for nationalized health care. Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that it reserves the right to regulate any economic activity that has a \u201ccarbon footprint.\u201d Just last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said climate change requires that \u201cevery aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory.\u201d Rep. Barney Frank, chair of the Financial Services Committee, has his eye on regulating executive pay. . . .<\/p>\n
\nAnd yet, for conservatives to suggest in any way, shape or form that there\u2019s something \u201csocialistic\u201d about any of this is the cause of knee-slapping hilarity for liberal pundits and bloggers everywhere. . . . \n
The whole spectacle was just too funny for liberal observers. Robert Schlesinger, U.S. News & World Report\u2019s opinion editor, was a typical giggler. He chortled, \u201cWhat\u2019s really both funny and scary about all of this is how seriously the fringe-nuts in the GOP take it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putting aside the funny and scary notion that it\u2019s \u201cfunny and scary\u201d for political professionals to take weighty political issues seriously, there are some fundamental problems with all of this disdain. For starters, why do liberals routinely suggest, even hope, that Obama and the Democrats are leading us into an age of socialism, or social democracy or democratic socialism? (One source of confusion is that these terms are routinely used interchangeably.)<\/p>\n
For instance, in (another) fawning interview with President Obama, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham mocks Obama\u2019s critics for considering Obama to be a \u201ccrypto-socialist.\u201d This, of course, would be the same Jon Meacham who last February co-authored a cover story with Newsweek\u2019s editor at large (and grandson of the six-time presidential candidate for the American Socialist Party) Evan Thomas titled \u2014 wait for it \u2014 \u201cWe Are All Socialists Now,\u201d in which they argued that the growth of government was making us like a \u201cEuropean,\u201d i.e. socialist, country.<\/p>\n
Washington Post columnists Jim Hoagland (a centrist),\u00a0 E.J. Dionne (a liberal) and Harold Meyerson (very, very liberal) have all suggested that Obama intentionally or otherwise is putting us on the path to \u201csocial democracy.\u201d Left-wing blogger and Democratic activist Matthew Yglesias last fall hoped that the financial crisis offered a \u201creal opportunity\u201d for \u201cmassive socialism.\u201d Polling done by Rasmussen \u2014 and touted by Meyerson \u2014 shows that while Republicans favor \u201ccapitalism\u201d over \u201csocialism\u201d by 11 to 1, Democrats favor capitalism by a mere 39% to 30%. So, again: Is it really crazy to think that there is a constituency for some flavor of socialism in the Democratic Party?<\/p>\n
I realize there is a continuum from (1) laissez faire free market capitalism [not socialism] (2) free market governed by law and some regulations [not socialism] (3) government control of the economy [socialistic] (4) government having the right to nationalize private companies [socialist] (5) government having the right to nationalize private companies without compensating the original owners [socialist] (6) government owning the means of production [socialist] (7) government owning all private property [communism]<\/p>\n
It seems to me that we are presently at #4, veering at #5, since investors in GM and Chrysler were stiffed, forced to receive only pennies on the dollar and the government in effect seizing their assets without their say. I realize that the current government share in the economy is relatively small, though slated to become much, much more once the health care industry is taken over. But the philosophy remains, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m interested in right now. I\u2019m curious if you Democratic readers are OK with this. What number would you find acceptable? Would you agree with the much-touted European-style social democracy<\/a>?<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jonah Goldberg asks why liberals laugh indignantly when conservatives say that President Obama\u2019s economic policies are socialist, when they themselves in other contexts praise his policies for being socialist: The government effectively owns General Motors and controls Chrysler, and the president is deciding what kind of cars they can make. Uncle Sam owns majority stakes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n
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