You know, Mr. Whittle makes some very good points. But it bugs the hell out of me when people throw out “the ‘S’ Word” without understanding what it is.
As soon as you hear “Obama is a socialist”, I just cringe. And it’s not just stupid people who say it – supposedly well-educated and supposed ‘expert’ talking heads do it all the time.
Let’s get it straight – Socialism is when you have state ownership of key industries (or all of them). Socialism is when the government says that it is not fair that some people own businesses and others work for them, so they are taking over. This is not what we have with Obama. For all their flaws and arrogance, the bailouts were not intended to result in the government permanently owning the auto or banking industry. Obama is not a socialist. He may privately wish he could go down that route, but he has not done so publicly.
No, what Obama is producing is still a country where private enterprise and investors still own everything. But, through taxes and regulations, the government is telling private business what it can make, how it can make it, how much it can pay its workers. When the economy is still in private hands but a government dictates to business how they should work and what they should make, that is not socialism. That is Fascism.
Unfortunately when you tell people that, you get blank looks. “Isn’t fascism what you got with Hitler, killing Jews, military dictatorship, warmongering?” No it is not. As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie.
@Dreadnought: Whatever you call it, we’re facing a soft tyranny and headed down the path to a much harder tryanny.
If you want to get right down to it, fascism, economically speaking, is more isolationist than what we are experiencing under Obama; so I wouldn’t say that was the correct term, either.
I just know what it isn’t.
It isn’t a Constitutional Republic any more. The Constitution’s firewalls have long since been breached.
Kalashnikat
11 years ago
If I were a republican candidate for anything at all, I’d crawl over broken glass to have my speeches written by Bill…He can articulate things I feel in my heart and also know by logic and perception, better than anyone I’ve ever heard.
BILL WHITTLE should seriously be coax to prepare for the next election,
as a CANDIDATE, WITHOUT ANY VETTING FROM THE CONSERVATIVES WHICH IS NOT GOOD FOR A PROFILE OF A CANDIDATE AND THE INSULT LEAVE A POISON ON THE CROWD’S TONGUE
AND DESTROY HIS IMAGE MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE SPECIALLY IN THIS AGE OF FAST COMMUNICATIONS AND STORAGE OF IT, WHERE THE MINUS ATTACK FROM THE SAME PARTY
IS REGISTERED AND ACCES BY THE OPPONENTS AT THE TIP OF THEIR FINGERS, THEY LOVED TO DESTROY MITT ROMNEY DIDN’T THEY? USING THE INFOS GIVEN BY THE OTHER CANDIDATES VISCIOUSLY FOR THEIR OWN INTEREST, WHICH WAS AS BAD AS THE OPPPONENT,
You know, Mr. Whittle makes some very good points. But it bugs the hell out of me when people throw out “the ‘S’ Word” without understanding what it is.
As soon as you hear “Obama is a socialist”, I just cringe. And it’s not just stupid people who say it – supposedly well-educated and supposed ‘expert’ talking heads do it all the time.
Let’s get it straight – Socialism is when you have state ownership of key industries (or all of them). Socialism is when the government says that it is not fair that some people own businesses and others work for them, so they are taking over. This is not what we have with Obama. For all their flaws and arrogance, the bailouts were not intended to result in the government permanently owning the auto or banking industry. Obama is not a socialist. He may privately wish he could go down that route, but he has not done so publicly.
No, what Obama is producing is still a country where private enterprise and investors still own everything. But, through taxes and regulations, the government is telling private business what it can make, how it can make it, how much it can pay its workers. When the economy is still in private hands but a government dictates to business how they should work and what they should make, that is not socialism. That is Fascism.
Unfortunately when you tell people that, you get blank looks. “Isn’t fascism what you got with Hitler, killing Jews, military dictatorship, warmongering?” No it is not. As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie.
@Dreadnought: Whatever you call it, we’re facing a soft tyranny and headed down the path to a much harder tryanny.
If you want to get right down to it, fascism, economically speaking, is more isolationist than what we are experiencing under Obama; so I wouldn’t say that was the correct term, either.
I just know what it isn’t.
It isn’t a Constitutional Republic any more. The Constitution’s firewalls have long since been breached.
If I were a republican candidate for anything at all, I’d crawl over broken glass to have my speeches written by Bill…He can articulate things I feel in my heart and also know by logic and perception, better than anyone I’ve ever heard.
BILL WHITTLE should seriously be coax to prepare for the next election,
as a CANDIDATE, WITHOUT ANY VETTING FROM THE CONSERVATIVES WHICH IS NOT GOOD FOR A PROFILE OF A CANDIDATE AND THE INSULT LEAVE A POISON ON THE CROWD’S TONGUE
AND DESTROY HIS IMAGE MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE SPECIALLY IN THIS AGE OF FAST COMMUNICATIONS AND STORAGE OF IT, WHERE THE MINUS ATTACK FROM THE SAME PARTY
IS REGISTERED AND ACCES BY THE OPPONENTS AT THE TIP OF THEIR FINGERS, THEY LOVED TO DESTROY MITT ROMNEY DIDN’T THEY? USING THE INFOS GIVEN BY THE OTHER CANDIDATES VISCIOUSLY FOR THEIR OWN INTEREST, WHICH WAS AS BAD AS THE OPPPONENT,