ORIGINAL POST 4/1/16: There is no clearer analysis of what Obama is than this 2012 piece by Thomas Sowell. Obama is not a socialist. He is a leftwing fascist in the long grand tradition of Liberal Fascism as brilliantly described in detail by Jonah Goldberg. One of the great misconceptions of modern politics is that fascism is exclusively a position of the Right. Wrong.
Pre-WWII Leftists lionized capital F Fascists like Mussolini and even Hitler for the effective management of their respective countries: “He made the trains run on time.” When things got blatantly messy (as they always do) in enforcing any sort of utopia, obviously brutal fascism was positioned in public opinion as something exclusively on the Right, supposedly distinct from the equally all-encompassing tyranny of the Left. No less a statesman than Uncle Joe Stalin is generally credited with this negative PR coup.
In a nutshell, the fascist lets you own your business in name but not in practice. Big Brother Fascist tells you how to run it. When business is good, The One can take all the credit. When business is bad or said business has to act independently to survive, raising rates according to the market and the bottom line, El Jefe cries “Foul!” to his howling followers and proceeds to tax, extort, shame, blackmail, shake down and usually destroy the evil business. All “non-violently” with a fountain pen, mind you. The unphotogenic cudgel and boot are supposedly the messy domain of the Right. In America, the Left has learned to use the legal system rather than armed thugs to get its way. But just in case such force is necessary, it has determined that guns in the hands of private citizens are inconvenient.
“…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.”
It is Obama’s great coup to have combined the stealth of both Rightwing and Leftwing tyrannies. Incorporating the former, the voting masses are bought off by allowing them their businesses and their property in exchange for their votes and their hefty tributes to the war chests of certain politicians. Incorporating the latter, they are told just how far they can go before Big Brother takes them over…or destroys them. Community Organizing 101. Heads I win, tails you lose.
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