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By Jacob Hornberger
Obama the Socialist
Amidst all the devastation from the latest economic crisis, there have been some really funny moments. Among the most humorous has got to be what happened recently with President Obama and the New York Times.
I recently referenced an article by Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson in which he expressed shock that people are actually calling President Obama a socialist because of his massive stimulus package, bank bailouts, and tighter government regulation. All this government involvement in economic activity, Meyerson says, just consists of free-market mechanisms designed to help revitalize America's free-enterprise system. He says that it's not socialism and interventionism that are at the root of the current crisis but rather America's capitalist system.
Well, guess what then happened! The New York Times conducted an interview with Obama in which the reporter asked him to respond to suggestions that he is a socialist. Obama laughingly responded, "The answer would be no" and then, according to the paper, added that he was "making some very tough choices" on the budget.
And now the really funny part happens. About an hour-and-a-half later, Obama actually calls the reporter back and says that he wants to give a fuller answer on the socialist question. He wanted to point out that "large-scale government intervention in the markets and the expansion of social welfare programs had begun under his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush."
Now, if you're not rolling in the aisles from laughter at this, then you've got to be either a conservative or a liberal rather than a libertarian.
Here's what happened, as any clear-thinking libertarian will tell you.
America was founded on the principles of a free market. What "free market" meant was that market activity was free from government control. That is, "free market" didn't mean less government control or regulation of market activity, it meant free of government control or regulation.
It also meant no income tax. People were free to keep everything they earned. It also meant no welfare programs. That is, there were no government programs in which people were taxed in order to give the money to other people.
In the late 1800s and continuing into the early 1900s, philosophical attacks began being leveled at the philosophy of economic liberty. The chief attackers were the Progressives, who were copying socialist and regulatory ideas from European socialists and interventionists. Some of the attacks were successful, as reflected by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the 16th Amendment, the Federal Reserve (which caused the 1929 stock-market crash), and minimum-wage laws in some of the states.
For decades, the advocates of economic liberty were able to stem the tide. But with the stock-market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression, the socialist and interventionist tide overwhelmed America like a tsunami. Franklin Roosevelt seized upon the crisis to revolutionize America's economic system. Seizing upon the economic principles of both the socialists and fascists, the primary mission of the federal government became taxing some to give to others and regulating economic and business activity. The era of laissez faire had come to an end.
But Roosevelt was a brilliant politician. He understood that Americans generally had a deep revulsion against socialism and fascism. So, he simply convinced them that all his welfare-statism and interventionism, including Social Security, the SEC, the NIRA, and the FHA weren't socialistic or fascistic but instead simply free-market mechanisms to save America's free-enterprise system.
It worked. And that's the way it's been ever since. No matter how many socialistic and fascistic policies were adopted over the years, they were always to be considered "free-market devices" to improve America's free-enterprise system. The public schools, which themselves are a model of a socialist enterprise, reinforced people's mindsets by year-after-year repetitive indoctrination: "America has a free-enterprise system. America has a free-enterprise system."
For a while, Republicans resisted the trend, fighting for the principles of economic liberty on which America was founded. But realizing that they were unlikely to regain the reins of power by hewing to principle, Republicans finally threw in the towel and joined the socialist-fascist bandwagon. In doing so, they followed the script -- that all this socialism and fascism that they were now embracing were really the free market in action.
Thus, it is easy to understand why Obama is confused, confounded, and troubled by the allegation that he is a socialist. All his life he has been taught that he's pro-free-enterprise, that America has a free-enterprise system, that all these welfare-state, regulatory programs are free-enterprise, and, perhaps most important of all, that those free-enterprise-loving Republicans believe in all this too.
It has been the libertarians, of course, who have pierced through this life of the lie and this devotion to unreality. Unlike Republicans and Democrats, we recognize that Roosevelt didn't save free enterprise with his socialism and fascism. He destroyed it. Thus, unlike the Republicans and Democrats, we libertarians don't find ourselves exclaiming during the current economic crisis, "Oh, my gosh, free enterprise has failed again." Unlike them, we understand that it's their socialism and fascism that have failed again and that the only real solution lies in restoring the principles of economic liberty on which our nation was founded, which would include at a minimum the repeal of all welfare-state and regulatory programs and departments and the abolition of the federal income tax and the IRS.
The Cause of Poverty
Liberals are saying that President Obama isn't really a socialist because he doesn't favor complete government ownership and control of everything, which is the strict definition of socialism. Since he "only" favors massive government involvement in some things, such as education, healthcare, mail delivery, transportation, retirement, employment, airports, money, bailouts, subsidies, grants, banks, insurance companies, the stock market, occupations, the drug war, and trade restrictions and immigration controls as well as progressive income taxation and equalization of income -- well, according to liberals, all that makes Obama "free enterprise" instead of socialist.
I wonder what Fidel Castro, who also favors all those things, would say about that.
Lost in all this debate on whether Obama is a socialist or not is one simple but important point: It is the dead hand of government that is the cause of America's economic woes. That means that the more that Obama does to restore wealth and prosperity to America with his increases in borrowing, spending, and printing money, the worst things are going to get.
The situation is akin to someone suffering from arsenic poisoning. He goes to the doctor and asks for an antidote. The doctor prescribes more arsenic.
What liberals, who purport to love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged, fail to recognize is another important point: It is the dead hand of the state that is the cause of poverty. Or to be more precise, it is massive government involvement in economic activity that prevents or inhibits a society from becoming wealthy. Call it socialism, fascism, welfare-statism, central planning, inflationism, wealth equalization, or just massive government involvement in the economy, the fact remains: the heavier the hand of government in people's pocketbooks and business activity, the poorer people will be.
Consider my hometown of Laredo, Texas. It is located adjacent to the Rio Grande. On the other side of the river sits Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. It's actually one great big metropolitan area, separated by a river.
Yet, the standard of living of people in Nuevo Laredo is markedly lower than that of those living in Laredo. It's a phenomenon that one cannot help but notice the minute he crosses the border into Nuevo Laredo. People in Nuevo Laredo are a lot poorer than those in Laredo.
I'll bet that most Americans would never ask themselves that simple one-word question that they used to constantly ask when they were children, before they had it drummed out of them in those government-run schools their parents were forced to send them to: "Why?" Why are people in Nuevo Laredo significantly poorer than those in Laredo?
After all, if one travels to the American city of St. Louis, he'll find that the standard of living of people in East St. Louis, Illinois, is about the same as that in St. Louis, Missouri. That city is separated by the Mississippi River rather than the Rio Grande. Could that be the difference?
No. The reason that people in Nuevo Laredo are so much poorer than people in Laredo is this: The dead hand of the state is much more prevalent in Mexico than it is in the United States. As bad as things are in the U.S. with respect to taxes, welfare, regulation, inflation, and bureaucracy, they are 1,000 times worse in Mexico. While we have Big Government in the United States, Mexicans have Mega Government.
That's the reason people are poorer in Mexico than they are in the United States. It's also the reason that people in North Korea are poorer than those in Mexico. The dead hand of the state is more prevalent in North Korea than it is in Mexico.
All this should provide a clue for liberals, who are supposedly interested in helping the poor. If one wants to raise standards of living for people, the solution is not to increase taxes, spending, borrowing, and regulation but instead to slash them, such as by abolishing the income tax and the IRS and by completely separating the economy and the state. That's the way to help the poor.
Alas, however, liberals move in precisely the opposite direction -- higher taxes, borrowing, spending, welfare, regulation, bailouts, and stimulus plans. Even worse, they continue to force children into those government-run schools where they learn to memorize, regurgitate, and conform to this destructive nonsense rather than learn how to critically analyze and challenge it.
Copyright © 2009 The Future of Freedom Foundation
Article appeared as feature on www.campaignforliberty.com site 23Mar 10AM 126305,10PM 126903; 29Mar 131114
gulch
This post has been edited by galtgulch: 29 March 2009 - 08:46 PM
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