Now that Obama, erstwhile tire inflater / mocker of drilling has flipped on domestic drilling, I thought I’d resurrect this oldie but goodie:
Drilling aside, doesn’t she seem prescient? Oil companies, auto companies, banks, student loans, what’s the difference? Socialism always lurks, below.
AND IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN SOCIALISM, then I challenge any of you to draw a line – in terms of dominating, controlling and/or completely taking over private enterprise – over which you believe the government may not cross.
Sort of like a challenge to name a maximum acceptable individual income tax rate, its really hard to get an answer from a liberal. There’s always some sucker / (rich thief) to raid. Right?
Please share widely!
Socialism is appropriate for some things, but I’m happy to let other things be mainly capitalist. I refuse to be a slave to ideology on these things. I go for what works, which I define as providing the greatest good for the greatest number. I’d rather debate on a case by case basis as to what extent government involvement is appropriate and even that can change with the times.
According to the demolisherite critique of liberals, we’re all crypto-Marxists: either we secretly want socialism or our ideas just lead us there without knowing it. (One can confirm this by visiting his blog, his oeuvre on RMG, or his posts here.) He takes this as being some kind of opening wedge toward totalitarianism.
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p>So, Christopher, your saying “case by case” just confirms demolisher’s thesis. You see you’re unwilling to say, “Income tax should be capped at 30%” — or some such number. You’re all case-by-case. If you’re suspected of being a crypto-Marxist, then, your vagueness is all part of the crypto act. He can return to his bunker knowing that he’s gotten further confirmation that another liberal secretly wants Obama to seize the means of production and the commanding heights of the economy.
Untangling all of this seems like a bunch of work. Certainly American liberals are not socialists. But defining all the terms, diving into historical and political analysis, and doing it with someone who thinks we’re venomous (his word) anyway, is going to be a tremendous amount of work.
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p>But then what’s the point? Who really cares? The accusation of socialism is simple political invective from people like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, not an accusation from political scientists or American historians. Do we want to accept this invitation to a graduate seminar under such unfriendly terms? It would seem more productive to engage issues on their merits. Like financial regulation, for example.
Aside: he also regards liberals as appallingly wimpy. Holding these two thoughts simultaneously must be a challenge. Can wimpy totalitarians wear socialist boots?
And it’s work that’s wasted, since you have to do it all over again the next time he launches his toy boat. And the next time. And the time after that…
KBusch already noted this diary from 2006 where he posts a top ten list of things he hates about liberals, then accuses people of being unwilling to “debate.” Pathetic, really.
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p>What’s most striking in reading his writings, from then and now, is how doctrinaire he is. His 2006 post is a straight reflection of the Fox news talking points of the day. So is his recent obsession with SOCIALISM. It’s all just right-wing political correctness.
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p>It IS amusing to read his blog entries from back then:
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p>Not even wrong. Just sad and hateful.
Hey! KBusch I know you snuck it in but you actually tried to make a point in there amidst the endless flow of ad hominem invective!
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p>You can’t be serious. Or are you saying that anyone who writes a book or article sympathetic to my worldview is neither a political scientist not a historian?
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p>You reveal a closed mind, there.
It’s not as if I hear a drumbeat from academia accusing Democrats or liberals of being socialists.
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p>And no, Glenn Beck is not a scholar.
I know nothing about you, demolisher. I only know what you write. I’m responding to what you write. By definition, that’s not ad hominem.
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p>Are all criticisms of someone’s position ad hominem?
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p>Your name calling on the other hand —
but I do appreciate your candid and forthright response.
Howard Dean appears to agree with you
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p>(around 45 seconds in)
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p>This is no big deal to you guys, and you dont want to have to wear some “nasty label” around just because you believe this stuff is fine.
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p>But the people on the other side completely do NOT believe this stuff is fine. They (and I) find any unnecessary government control to be unacceptable.
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p>The criteria that I would use to allow government control are, loosely speaking:
Is it necessary for the survival of the state?
OR,
Is it necessary to protect the rights of individuals?
OR MAYBE,
Does it do great societal good, to the more or less equal benefit of all?
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p>There are some other oddball cases, like animal rights that I’d throw in. Most everything else can be seen as protection of individual rights – even protecting the environment to some extent, because e.g. if you cause acid rain on my head, that messes with my rights.
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p>(Note that goods and services can never be rights, at least not in my definition. And wealth distribution clearly violates equal taxation and equal benefit, which I view as sort of a legalized thievery.)
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p>The “pragmatist” argument, which I think you subscribe to simply says “whatever does the most net good”, which is problematic on its face because you can theoretically completely screw over someone’s rights and yet still do a lot of good for others. Furthermore, the law of unintended consequences nails you a great percentage of the time. For example, who really sets out with the intent of creating a dependent class?
…with regards to your three criteria. I am a loose constructionist. As long as the Constitution does not prohibit it it’s fair game for debate while acknowledging room to disagree on the merits. I also use the Preamble as a guide to what the body politic may do. If a proposed law addresses any one or more of the six reasons listed for “ordaining and establish[ing] this Constitution” then it passes muster, again allowing for debate as to whether the specific idea is actually a good one on its own merits.
The constitution fundamentally restricts the powers of the government, and protects the rights of individuals. It does not give the government any rights which are not explicitly forbidden, rather the opposite:
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p>(10th amendment, bill of rights)
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p>So I would suggest you invert your thinking on that one – which is how we end up getting all manner of wacky laws covered under the commerce clause. We’ve really bent this constitution in the last century, you know…
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The drafters of the amendment debated whether to include the word “exclusively” after “reserved” in the tenth amendment, as well as “expressly” before “delegated” which would match the language of the Articles of Confederation. They obviously decided against it. Besides, the people can act through their federal government just as easily as through local and state governments. Alexander Hamilton had an expansive view as did James Madison, at least at first. SCOTUS has also backed this up. Article I section 8 has the list of things the federal government must do. I would argue that doing more than that is not so much overstepping, but rather going above and beyond the call of duty.
I don’t think you have to worry about that from Obama. It seems he supports subsidized free market capitalism to the benefit of the corporations more than he really cares about the struggles of the middle/working class.
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p>And the price of oil is no longer dictated by supply and demand. It’s dictated by how much the price can be artificially inflated to the benefit of the buyers and sellers on Wall Street. It’s sickening to watch – really.
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p>In other words, oil prices rise on speculation, otherwise known as fantasy. Because speculating is nothing more than fantasizing about future, they can alway speculate on the positive side and continue to drive up prices, which they are doing rather successfully.
Can there be a more molested and abused word in American politics right now than “socialism”? Gaaah.
I guess my point/motive was to deflate the stigma and basically say, sure there may be policies with a hint of socialism in them, but so what? Let’s leave loaded labels aside and discuss on the merits what’s good for our country.
My point is more he’s been calling liberals the “swarming kossacks” (make a great name for the BMG softball team) since 2005. The accusation has become meaningless.
In fact, this might be a very interesting discussion to have with JoeTS, EdgarTheArmenian, or both. I sense that I disagree with JoeTS on some of this, but he’s very well-informed, he’s thought about it, and to have a debate you need disagreement. ETA has clearly thought a lot about socialism, too.
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p>On the other hand, debating whether policies are socialist with which the German Christian Democrats, the French Union for a Popular Movement, and the British Tories seem pretty comfortable seems, well, odd.
… that use the term socialist as a sufficient criteria for rejection fail on their face. Just saying they are socialist is insufficient. You’d have to prove that socialist policies are never good or never constitutional, neither of which is true and therefore a socialist label is insufficient for rejection – unless you choose not to think about it too much.
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I might imagine a reasonable conservative making some kind of argument that we have to be on guard against Fabianism. (Wasn’t there an old concern about “creeping socialism”?) Such a person might be concerned that the government would gradually accrue more and more control, every step somewhat reasonable but with an unworkable socialist economy at the end of the line.
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p>I sense that some make an argument like this. Our diarist hints at such an argument. Given the experience of Western European democracies and Canada, it’s difficult for me to get too worried about the Fabian menace. Possibly Bryan Caplan might make such an argument. Not sure.
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p>The liberal, case-by-case approach as articulated by Christopher above seems to be how we on the American left operate: we look at our society and think about what we would want improved. I’m not sure what we want after our current agenda was implemented. What’s after financial regulation, single payer health care, workers’ rights, and various forms of equality? I doubt that it’s nationalization of Verizon and Microsoft.
…, standards of living, social mobility, and general population satisfaction in several western democracies with much more socialist policies at their civic core leads me to think that we could use some creeping socialism in this country. They certainly disprove the notion that socialism is some kind of social and economic ‘rot’ that should be avoided at all costs. It also seems to focus their tax policies in a way that makes them much more resistant to deficit spending.
And I don’t wish to play the part of substitute conservative, but a debate involving an actual conservative might be interesting.
Just once it would be nice if ideologues read American history.
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p>Most of what you call “socialism” are policies traditionally associated with American conservatism.
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p>Without exception:
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p>…are policies designed by and for American conservatives, from the Federalists, through the Whigs, to nineteenth and early twentieth-century Republicans.
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p>Oil companies: National petroleum reserves
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p>Auto companies: National Defense Highway Act
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p>Banks: The First and Second Banks of the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank
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p>Student loans: Land grant colleges (1862); The US Military and Naval Academies; State Military Academies (VMI,The Citadel, Texas A&M, etc.)
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p>…plus government subsidies of canals, roads, mail, the telegraph system, railroads, telephones, airplanes (through the postal service).
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p>You will note that nothing above except the Interstate Highway System postdates Herbert Hoover’s Administration.
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p>What made America great was a policy of state intervention on behalf of its industries (including agriculture), while also subsidizing upward social mobility. This policy was first espoused by Alexander Hamilton and was followed by Northern conservatives for a century and a half.
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p>Laissez-fair was never more than late nineteenth-century faculty club bullshit, and never taken seriously by the private sector.
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p>When I was a kid we learned this in fifth grade social studies.
It’s shocking how many folks seem not to have taken a civics course.
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p>Here’s betting demolisher would fail this citizenship test.
Unfortunately, the cynic in me wonders how many Americans could pass that test. I’ve thought for a while that even natural-born citizens ought to have to pass that test in order to be allowed to vote. Wonder how many of the “tea party” crowd we could eliminate (or at least knock some sense into) that way.
…the context of the eras you mention. Federalist/Hamilton begat the Whigs, who evolved into the 19th and early 20th century Republicans; were the progressives of their times. The policies they advocated and implemented were central to the economic (and social) development of America. The reactionaries were the Jeffersonian/Jacksonian Democrats who supported the agrarian status quo, which included the genocide of Indians and maintaining the institution of slavery.
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p>I certainly do not disagree with your basic point…federal government involvement in the economic growth of the country is a deeply routed reality going back to our founders. If the word was around in the 1790s when Hamilton consolidated all the debts from the 13 original states into one larger NATIONAL debt–which European financiers wanted and resulted in the extension of more credit, which of course spurred economic growth–the man many consider the founder of American Capitalism, would have been called a socialist by the Demolisher’s of that era.
…in the American political context.
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p>Among other things the Federalists were profoundly anti-democratic (their term for universal – white male – sufferage was “mobocracy”). Hamilton would have preferred a constitutional monarchy, and settled only reluctantly for an elected President.
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p>The Constitution was a consciously conservative document, and publicly espoused as such.
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p>Reread the Federalist Papers.
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p>It was the anti-Federalist Jeffersonians who insisted on a Bill of Rights as a condition of support. Hardly reactionary behavior.
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p>The Jacksonian opposition to the Bank of the United States was in the service of workers, debtors, and farmers who lost economic power (sometimes to the point of starvation) in a Hamiltonian economy based on a strong currency, and favoring equity over debt.
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p>It’s dangerous to apply contemporary values to eighteenth and nineteenth century people and events. For example, population pressure made a form of settler colonialism inevitable in the West, morality notwithstanding.
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p>The invention of the cotton gin made both the expansion of slavery and the development of a distinct anti-capitalist Southern culture inevitable, as was the civil war that eventually resulted.
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p>While the latter Whigs and early Republicans espoused means of subsidizing upward social mobility, such programs were supported in the context of aiding internal development and maintaining social stability – in short, in the service of conservative values.
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p>In addition the current tendency to use European – specifically French – concepts such as “Left” and “Right”, and apply them to American-specific cultural, political and social conditions tends to muddy the water further.
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p>Rather than cite Jefferson and Jackson as reactionaries, a better example would be Calhoun.
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p>Like it or not, the Federalists and their successors had no trouble defining themselves as conservatives at a time when gender and race were considered minor concerns in national politics, compared to class and region.
…I think we can a site a myriad of facts that would bolster both our cases and there are enough contradictory behavior from individuals, events and policies to undercut our different thesis (Jefferson was Hamilton’s biggest adversary in his quest to expand Federal power, yet Jefferson unilaterally double the territory of the US with the Louisiana Purchase; yes, Calhoun the reactionary was a Whig–yet the Whig and Federalist Parties were the “anti-war” parties of their eras.)
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p>I don’t think you can draw a linear line between the party or movement that supported the “little guy” in 1840 (to pick a date) and declare they were the “liberal party” of the era, or party that advocated for business interests are by default the conservative party…no matter what the era.
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p>Not only do you have to put things into an American political context, to define the conservative/liberal paradigm, you need to need to apply the context of the times and recognize which issues or policies were agents of modernity vs. the status quo. To complicate this, there were advocates for modernity and status quo within the factions of Democrats and the Federalist/Whig/Republican parties of the 18th, 19th and early 20th Century. Even more complex, there were elements of progressive/conservative values within the long careers of people like Calhoun–viewed early on as a reformer, or William Jennings Bryan, both an economic progressive and a social conservative.
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p>So ya, the waters are muddy.
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p>But you listed a series of “issues” that you labeled as conservative in previous eras and that is what I disagree with. The Morril Act of 1862 (Land Grant/public colleges) a conservative policy, based soley on the fact the Republican advocated it? Establishing the Federal Reserve Bank at the peak of the Progressive Era, which was an attempt to manage the 20 year boom/bust cycles (and didn’t really take hold until they screwed up dealing with the Crash of ’29) a conservative policy? Government investing in canals, roads, railroads, the Homestead Act may within a contemporary context appear to have supported the growth of commerce and therefore we would view them as “conservative”. But within the context of their times, they amounted to social engineering that advanced the agents of modernity, much like policies being advocated by progressives today–such as cap and trade with will mean the business interested of green industries will greatly profit from this policy that liberals advocate.
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p>In 100 years, maybe people will cite cap and trade as a “conservative” policy that was designed to boost the business interests of the solar energy and hydrogen gas interest that dominate our future economy. If they do, they are missing the context of our times.
Because those were the lables used by the proponents of those policies, both referentially and self-descriptively.
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p>A good history of the Progressive Movement annd its antecedants is aptly titled The Triumph of Conservatism for precisely these reasons.
lulz.
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p>This line of argument is pretty original – for 1934. Welcome to the 21st century.
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p>(From the Chicago Tribune 1934. Carrey Orr.)
We only disagree on where to draw that line.
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p>I’m pretty sure that you, like most of us, believe in collective roads, military, police, drinking water, sewage, and fire fighting. Some of these were pretty controversial in the past.
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p>I happen to believe that government should only do those things that it’s been clearly shown to do better than the “free market” can – health care, for example, where every other industrialized country pays far less for care that’s demonstrably as good or better than ours.
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p>What’s your criteria for which socialism is good socialism?
Manny surely you can distinguish between “socialism” and “government”!? For most people, the two are not synonymous!
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p>Or are you calling military a socialist institution? Because I”m pretty sure each of the items you mention predate socialism by hundreds of years. Now, lets have a look at what socialism means, since it something that seems to want to morph into “whatever”:
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p>http://www.merriam-webster.com…
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p>Manny I often think your posts are among the best here, but this one is a complete strikeout.
…that the United States is no where near having a socialist system? I don’t know many people who advocate the circumstances indicated in the definitions above.
… of Socialism, what the hell is Communism?
Isn’t the term “capitalism” itself a concept deriving from Marx? If that is so, aren’t we having a conversation where we accept Marx’ and Engels’ analysis but just have different values from them?
Heh.
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p>The other thing I love bringing up in the context of so-called ‘Christian’ protesters of socialism is the mode of ownership for Jesus and the apostles. The didn’t own anything. They lived communally. They were communists. Indeed there is fiction out there that hypothesizes the genesis of a Christian-Communist collective in the mid-west during a break-up of the US.
Remember when Ike was President and Republicans owned both houses of Congress? And the Middle Class was growing in leaps and bounds? And the top tax rate was 91%?
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p>All told, the wealthiest Americans paid 50% in federal taxes back then, vs. 17% today. And everything was just fine, just fine. So I guess I’d draw the line where Ike and his Republican Congress drew it.
and Democrats used to be racists. If R’s were the party of big taxes and big govt today, I would certainly have nothing to do with them.
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p>Where do you think the current deficit came from? Who created the department of Homeland Security? Where did the taxes come from that Obama cut?