Libertarian University of Chicago law Professor Richard Epstein has some interesting thoughts about Barack Obama in this column:
My Obama number is one. I know him through our association at the University of Chicago Law School and through mutual friends in the neighborhood. We have had one or two serious substantive discussions, and when I sent him e-mails from time to time in the early days of his Senate term, he always answered in a sensible and thoughtful fashion. And yet, for assessing the course of his likely presidency, I don't know him at all....
The dominant trope is that he will be a pragmatic president who will move in small increments toward the center, not in bold steps toward the left.
But is it all true? The short answer is that nobody knows. Virtually everyone who knows him recognizes that he plays his cards close to the vest, so that you can make your case to him without knowing whether it has registered. At this point, my fear is that the change in office will not lead to a change in his liberal voting record, as reinforced by a hyperactive Democratic platform. My great fear is that a landslide victory will give him solid majorities in both Houses of Congress, so that no stalling tactics by Republicans can slow down his legislative victory procession. At that point his innate pragmatism will line up with his strong left-of-center beliefs on issues that have thus far been muted during the campaign.
Put otherwise, Obama's vague calls for change that "you can believe in" are, to my thinking, wholly retrograde in their implications. At heart, he is an unreconstructed New Dealer who can see, and articulate, both sides on every question--but only as a prelude to championing the old corporatist agenda with a vengeance.
Unlike Epstein, I don't know Obama personally. But his fears are similar to mine. I don't believe that Obama is some kind of ogre, socialist, or terrorist sympathizer. He seems like a skillfull leader and a thoughtful person. And he has repeatedly shown that he is willing to prioritize his own political success over any ideological or personal agenda; in that respect, he's not much different from most successful politicians. I do, however, fear that the combined impact of Obama's left-wing policy views, decisive Democratic control of Congress, and a crisis atmosphere will lead to a large, difficult to reverse, expansion of government. If Obama were checked by a Republican Congress, as Bill Clinton was, I would be less concerned. But such is not likely to be the case. The danger of an Obama presidency is not so much the man himself as the political environment he is likely to have around him.
Related Posts (on one page):
- The Coming Explosion of Federal Spending:
- Larry Summers Channels Gordon Gekko:
- Obama Chief of Staff Hopes to Exploit the Economic Crisis to Expand the Growth of Government:
- Richard Epstein on Obama:
- Fear Itself, Con't:
- Exploiting Crises to Expand Government and Curtail Civil and Economic Liberties:
- Fear Itself.
- Why I'm Concerned About an Obama Victory:
So we know what you don't think the definition of "socialist" is - someone's whose left-wing policy views, if enacted, would lead to a large expansion of government.
What do you think the definition of "socialist" is? (Not "Socialist", which is a term irrelevant to this discussion, since that party nominated someone else.) If someone who doesn't think Obama is a socialist could please answer this question, I would be truly grateful.
And you you be so kind as to link to the posts where you worried about the lack of divided government under the Bush administration?
Thank goodness the four years of Republican control of the Presidency and the Congress from 2003-2007 resulted in no such thing.
I mean, if you find the modern liberal agenda to be scary, that's your right. But "unreconstructed New Dealer"? Come on...
Uh-oh, we know what that means!
On a more serious note, I just don't get this mindset. We've already had the largest expansion of government in 30 years, and it happened on a Republican watch. Let me list what I mean:
1. Medicare prescription drug benefit
2. Doubling (at least) the national debt
3. Nationalizing the largest mortgage lenders in the country (Fannie and Freddie) and the largest insurance company in the country (AIG).
4. Gov't ownership stakes in the nine largest banks in the country, with more banks to follow.
5. Guaranteeing the debt (for 3 years) of various corporations.
6. Guaranteeing money market funds.
7. Buying commercial paper.
And these are the things I can remember off the top of my head.
What the hell else is there?
A socialist is a person who favors government ownership of the means of production, and government control of all or most important economic activity.
Thank goodness the four years of Republican control of the Presidency and the Congress from 2003-2007 resulted in no such thing.
I have criticized the Republican record during that period on many occasions. Their shortcomings in no way diminish the likely impact of an Obama victory. Indeed, they exacerbate it by making it more difficult for the Republicans to resist Obama's efforts in a nonhypocritical way.
I thought that was a communist/Marxist.
Obama said that Reagan was a successful president in the sense that he changed the country and was a skillfull politician. He has never said that he thought that Reagan's policy positions were right in any significant way. Nor has he said taht those "excesses of liberalism" involved growing government too much, as opposed to mere tactical errors of implementation.
I thought that was a communist/Marxist. A Marxist is just one type of socialist (one who believes in Marx's theories of history and class conflict, which many non-Marxist socialists reject). A communist is a socialist who believes that socialism requires a repressive one party state, as advocated by Lenin and others.
Props to the Most Ethical Congress In History for keepin' W on a leash.
Truly 'unfair' of you to shortchange Sentor Reid and Representative Pelosi's important recent contributions.
True enough, but did you ever call for divided government as an antidote to Republican control?
Right, like having the government mail checks for $600 to everyone who makes less than $75,000.
Oh wait...
Or more to the point, "Did you vote for Kerry in 2004 in order to further your professed goal of divided government?"
Such an impolite question, that.
Would that be socialist?
See { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you } if you are too young to remember back to 1956.
Probably the reason he has broken with the Hyde park ideology he describes in the article.
Well, sure, but that's because he's a pragmatist and not an ideologue. If a particular liberal "big government" solution didn't work, he can recognize that and avoid making the same mistake twice, but that doesn't mean he's going to conclude that government is the problem in all cases. Sometimes experiments with privatization don't work so well either.
I wouldn't call Obama a centrist, but I certainly expect him to disappoint both people who reflexively favor more government and those who reflexively favor less government. The world is too complex to expect a one-size-fits-all solution.
Really? Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices like any other market participant is an issue of "generosity"? Seems to me the Democrats wanted Bush's plan to be less generous to the drug companies.
The second one should be easy.
[I'm totally using Illya's Socialism-Marxism-Communism distinction.]
Which he won't.
The post &its comments seem to exaggerate the degree of unity in the Democratic Party. Quite a few Democrats are moderates.
There are not enough *liberal* Democrats to do anything drastic, even leaving aside the issue of whether Obama is unusually liberal.
Furthermore, Bush was not opposed to increasing the size of government...something that increasingly demoralized conservatives. There will not be any brakes on the Obama presidency. Just read Michael Medved's column today. We will have a rash of new programs and new benefits that will never go away.
Besides, any expansion of the government will depend on the kindness of strangers willing to lend us money, which just ain't gonna happen. After eight years of mismanagement of the economy, how much longer will the Chinese be willing to lend us money to buy oil from the middle east? Or we could just print money, adding hyperinflation to the rest of our economic woes.
Check out government spending under Saint Ronald Reagan. Why wasn't that demoralizing?
USSA here we come!
Which is why FDR was thrown out after a single term. Ideas can fail -- visibly -- and still be popular.
And why the corrupt Chicago machine was tossed out long ago. Their (mostly) left/liberal ideas failed, visibly. (Obama has learned a few lessons from them.)
And, if you don't think that "mainstream" media will do everything they can to protect Obama, you haven't been paying attention.
Fantasy. The odds of this are quite low.
Striving for libertarian purity ignores the shriekingly obvious: We can't afford four more years of a Republican in the White House.
Torture and war are libertarian values that only the Republicans can be reliably expected to defend and advance. I learned this over the past 8 years.
Context, people, context.
This "divided government" argument really puts a lot of faith in the voters recognizing the value of a divided government.
I also wonder how many of the conservatives here were thinking the same thing in 1996 or 2000 or 2004. This just smacks of some weird rationalization for why you're not voting for the good candidate, but instead picking the other guy.
Note that like McCain, Carter, the least effective President before W., was an Annapolis grad. Note further that neither McCain nor Carter were lawyers. Now, unlike Carter when he was running, McCain is much more irascible, much older, and much less humanitarian. Will these traits make a positive difference?
Oh, the VC was rabidly in favor of a Democratic Congress in 2004 and 2006 ... I can't seem to find the posts, but I'm sure they're on the internet somewhere ...
As opposed to the large, difficult to reverse expansion of government we've seen under the Bush administration, with a horrendously expensive and entirely unnecessary war thrown in for good measure?
Okay, so with that we pretty much abandon the definition which is used in the region where most socialists win elections (I mean against other parties): Europe. After Francois Mitterand and his Parti Socialiste won power in 1981 (and included a few Communists in their coalition cabinet), they left the means to produce several important economic commodities in private hands when they could have expropriated them. Also, shopkeepers and small proprietors retained controlled of their businesses. It wasn't opposition activity that prevented them from doing that, either. They just didn't want to.
So I guess, here we have shown that Mitterand and the PS were not socialists at all? Ilya Somin, I like your writing a lot, but you've got to free yourself from this weird notion that if American feelings get hurt by the word "socialist", it must be an unfair slur. If what you mean to say is, "Obama is no further left than another prominent non-socialist like Mitterand, founder of France's Socialist Party", well then I have no dispute with you.
Pelosi and Reid and most of the democratic leaders have already said that one of the first orders of business is passing the Orwellian "Fairness Doctrine" to shut down talk radio. I doubt Obama will veto it. Obama's campaign and surrogates have already threatened and initimidated conservative blogs and non-profits who have dared to be highly critical of Obama or put out ads against him. This can only get worse when they actually have the full force of the DOJ, the IRS, and the rest of government to play with.
These are pretty much the only effective means for conservatives to organize, communicate and get information that the media won't provide.
Obama has already fired the opening broadside at Fox, in both the last debate and an interview on one of the big networks.
The left already controls the other opinion making machinery in this country - the schools, universities, media and entertainment.
Under the weight of all that, even if the 60% of this country that self-identifies themselves as moderately conservative or conservative gets totally pissed at what the Obama administration does, how precisely would we even know that? There will be an effective news blackout of all conservative opinion.
The Obama administration will be as a result of the American voters punishing George Bush, a clueless moderate, not a ringing endorsement of the Obama worldview. But a supermajority will give them the perceived mandate to impose it anyway and shut conservative voices off completely.
With all due respect to Mr. Somin, this has all the earmarks of a potential disaster for personal freedom that it will take a long time to recover from, whether you want to call it "socialism" or something else.
One of Carter's signal weaknesses was his difficulty working with his own party in Congress -- there was the Carter way or the highway, and the Dems in Congress increasingly came to prefer the highway.
One would expect that McCain would be more flexible given his years in the Senate, but he's never actually been much of a legislator (making his "experience" argument vs. Obama more risible).
I'm curious myself how well Obama would work with the Congress -- on the one hand, he may be a bit idealistic and in for some hard lessons, on the other, he doesn't seem likely to stick out his neck without having counted the votes first.
I rather doubt that any "Fairness Doctrine" would survive the present Court, especially given the changed nature of media. Anyone really see Roberts, Scalia, and Kennedy buying onto that? I wouldn't even count on Breyer not to join them.
When there were basically 3 networks on TV, the rule made an arguable kind of sense (and probably would've benefited conservatives). Nowadays, that rationale fails the smell test.
Leaving aside the obvious political points, that the Dems would be committing suicide by pushing anything so unpopular, and that the recently stifled voters would have little trouble figuring whether to vote "R" or "D" in 2010.
Have there been any real-world examples of the build-down of socialism without the misery and revolution of the failed 70-year Russian socialist experiment or the assassination of Allende in Chile?
I suppose New Zealand comes the closest, having tossed out most of the socialist policies and freed up their market substantially. Is Ireland another example? It's funny that China may well transition from socialism to freedom without passing through revolution.
Should those of us who want to rid the USSA of socialism study economics, politics or nuclear physics?
Could be. Spending as a percentage of GDP was 18.4% in 2000, Clinton's last year. It was 20.0% in 2007, but I suspect it will be larger in 2008. I think the largest previous increase in the size of government over the last 30 years was between 1979 and 1983, when the size of government increase from 20.2% of GDP to 23.5% of GDP.
He didn't understand Roosevelt's and Truman's dealings with Stalin, nor did he know the history of the relationship between Kennedy and Khrushchev. He also didn't know the history of capital gains tax reductions on total treasury revenue.
The captal gains history is not some arcane detail, since Obama was proposing a significant change in that tax. This stuff isn't hard. So, it is quite reasonable to question if Obama has learned about liberal excess from history.
-dk
i hate to be left out of a party, so let me throw my two cents in:
no, your guy is evil - look at this inconsistency i've found by twisting your words! my thoughts, which are entirely consistent when we look at them in a forgiving way which i won't grant you, are vastly superior to yours. do i even need to link to this incontrovertible fact!? in closing, you are an idiot bc i said so and i like my guy!
how can you tell someone is insane? they aren't tired of this election.
Presidents whose names contain all the letters in the word "Criminal" tend to resign from office, so watch out for that!!
I think the point is that the post implies we should not vote for Obama because he will expand the government and implement socialist policies. People who are pointing out Bush's socialist policies are saying that voting for McCain will not necessarily stop expansion of government and implementation of socialist policies. If voting for Obama and voting for McCain produce similar likelihoods of expansion of government and implementation of socialist policies, then Obama's alleged inclination towards those two goals ceases to be a factor that should be considered in deciding whom to vote for.
On the contrary, McCain has proposed bloating the government with plans to purchase (and manage?) mortgages. He has also proposed half baked ideas to let returning soldiers teach in schools without any credentials. Finally, he rashly chose a vice-president who cannot name a single periodical she reads. She also advocates for a right of privacy but not for abortion.
It is not McCain's unknown policies that I fear. It is the known. For this reason, I am voting for Obama.
Not so much. This NYT article links to a study cut off in 1998, below which the DJIA never fell during W.'s administration.
For at least 72 years (1927-1998), the stock market did far better under Democratic presidents than under Republicans, according to an article written by two finance professors at the University of California at Los Angeles, Pedro Santa-Clara and Rossen Valkanov, titled ''Political Cycles and the Stock Market,'' published in the October 2003 issue of The Journal of Finance.
Professors Santa-Clara and Valkanov look at the excess market return -- the difference between a broad index of stock prices (similar to the Standard &Poor's 500-stock index) and the three-month Treasury bill rate -- between 1927 and 1998. The excess return measures how attractive stock investments are compared with completely safe investments like short-term T-bills.
Sigh. When short on facts, repeat, repeat, repeat!
how can you tell someone is insane? they aren't tired of this election.
Stranger, you have a point.
Well, we do know she once read a copy of the John Birch Society magazine, American Opinion. Maybe that was the only one she could think of.
The change promised by Obama is himself, the election of a black role model for the next generation of young blacks. That is a good reason to vote for him, and a reason why many people are voting for him, but this may not be the best time to elect someone like him. It is likely that the next president will be unable to satisfy the people, no matter what he does or how well he does it, and will be judged a miserable failure, mostly for reasons that he can do nothing about. Whatever the next president comes to represent in the public mind is likely to be discredited for a generation or two.
If things get as bad as some expect, other countries will stop lending us money, inflation will climb to more than 400%, programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will just have to be cancalled totally and abruptly. We will have to bring the troops home from all over the world, then discharge all but a few needed to keep order, and cancel all veterans benefits. We will threaten the use of nuclear weapons to do what we formerly used troops to do, and proliferation will run wild. Public works will be cancelled. Utilities will revert to blackouts. Gas stations will close, and people will have to revert to walking or using bicycles. Death by starvation and disease will become rampant, especially among the young and the elderly.
Given our present predicament, a wise presidential candidate may want to run to lose.
Y'know, I would be all over the stupidity of this, if I hadn't actually heard similar justifications offered by some "commentators of color."
But is that really the change that *Obama* is promising? In his own words? That's it? No changes in tax policy, diplomacy, war?
There are different definitions of degrees of connection, besides coauthoring something written: playing a game of Go, receiving email, even the well known FOB's. The implication here is apparently AOB (Acquaintances of Barak), which is what's relevant in this context.
ys (Erdős 3)
We have been trying preferences, multiculturalism and bilingualism in education for roughly 40 years. But only 25% of Black students graduate from high school in places like Detroit, and more recently 50% of Latinos are dropping out of school in Los Angeles. President Obama will certainly appoint multiculturalist types to key positions such as Secretary of Education, but even more importantly, the tone set by his administration will make reform of Schools of Education much less likely. Assimilation and patriotism will continue to be four-letter words in K-12 curricula. Far from improving education for Blacks and Latinos, Obama will only perpetuate disastrous policies dating back to the late 60s.
My guess is by the end of an Obama Presidency, looking up the % GDP spent by government will be like reading the menu at a very expensive restaurant. Just a little note at the bottom of the page saying "If you have to ask, you shouldn't have come in here..."
Now, eventually, that might backfire. But, not before he's damaged the U.S. beyond even the wildest nightmares of those who simply worry about the size of government.
If anyone wants to prevent him from being elected, send emails to major bloggers and anti-BHO pundits urging them to promote the plan at my name's link.
I keep hearing from "thoughtful people" that Obama is a "skillful leader"? Really? Besides the campaign, that David Axelrod has run (and is drastically different from running anything else), what other evidence is there that Obama is a "skillful leader" or even skillful at getting anything "grand" accomplished?
My guess is that he will be a lackey of Pelosi, Reid, Dodd...and a variety of liberal interest groups.
I am genuinely intrested.
Thanks.
P.S. Unless I am ignorant running the Harvard law review is an extremly complex affair and his leadership is especially notable.
"If "socialist" is synonymous with "redistributionist," America has been quite a socialist country for decades if not longer, and every Presidential candidate in recent memory has been a socialist."
Sure. Do you have a suggestion for a better word? Redistributionist, at six syllables, is quite a mouthful, and welfarist is not in anyone's vocabulary so far as I know.
Professors Santa-Clara and Valkanov look at the excess market return -- the difference between a broad index of stock prices (similar to the Standard &Poor's 500-stock index) and the three-month Treasury bill rate -- between 1927 and 1998. The excess return measures how attractive stock investments are compared with completely safe investments like short-term T-bills."
Easy money will generally have the effect of helping owners of real assets and harming owners of financial assets, but it's a little crazed to suggest that helping shareholders and real estate owners at the expense of bondholders and lenders is somehow good for the country as a whole. It just redistributes wealth from one group of rich people to another.
I wonder how the young Asians and Indians manage to do so well without a presidential role model?
I seem to recall that Bush was declared the victor in '00 by SCOTUS w/ less than 50% of the vote -- but he commenced executing an agenda like a "landslide winner" and operated on the 50+1 principal.
Then in 2004, right after he beat Kerry with less than 51% of the popular vote, he strutted around taking about "mandates" and "political capital."
And here we find ourselves as a nation.
So I find it remarkable that Epstein is worried that a president elected (let's assume) with an electoral and popular-vote landslide should be disqualified from applying the principles he's operated since first securing elected office.
Where was these concerns the past 8 years?
Oh yeah. And as I remember reading repeatedly from commenters on this blog manny times in the past few years -- "elections have consequences."
who gives a sh* about divided government with obstructionist GOP, which already put our country in the dire situation.
Liberals/democrats need total control of the government to implement necessary rescue measures.
the reformed GOP( if such a thing is possible at all) will have quite a few years to reassess the divisiveness and brainwashed propaganda of Rovianism and Rushism and join the humanity .
But let's be clear: Obama is not a "socialist" in any meaningful use of that word (if favoring progressive taxation is "socialist" then the U.S. has been socialist for quite some time -- not really a meaningful use of the term). He's not a radical. He's a liberal.
I would guess that many of the posters upset by the prospect of a liberal president are, or at least usually vote, Republican. Perhaps you could spend some time trying to figure out how you got into this situation -- a mere four years after Rove was promising the "permanent Republican majority."
If nothing else, his ambition will keep him from going off the deep end. He's too pragmatic to get too stupid.
By the first part of that definition, Sweden isn't socialist, and neither are most of the Socialist parties in the world.
OTOH, by the second clause alone, most American elections are about varieties of socialism.
I suppose to make for more of a scientific comparison we could try enslaving them for a few hundred years, and then see how long it takes their descendants to bounce back. Let me know when the results are in.
For starters, he knows how to surround himself with smart people.
Yeah, it's not like that Gandhi guy knew anything about leadership.
My parting comment will be to assert yet again that it is okay and makes ideological sense for libertarians who don't love Bush to criticize Obama for wanting to redistribute wealth more, regulate the economy more, and expand the scope of government more than certain other candidates. McCain may or may not be among them, depending on your opinion, but he definitely did have a point when he mentioned that Bush isn't running this year.
Bush is indeed the worst thing that could have happened to the less-statist party. Doing what he did he simultaneously alienated the anti-statists and made it okay for the more-statist party to do what they do. No more Carter-style deregulation (can you imagine how much a plane ticket would cost with pre-1977 style regulation and 2008-style fuel prices?)
It is also perfectly okay to note that the Republican nominees of 2000, 2004, and 2008 were statists who were essentially handed to us by a media which loves statists and generally leans away from Republicans. Bush and McCain were can't-lose propositions to the MSM.
And there's not a thing in the world to prevent someone from taking that as a statement of wholehearted support for Bush and McCain. Do you think anyone cares any more? Go ahead and tell everyone you know that anyone who opposes Obama supports McCain and supported Bush.
Who really cares?
Beat me to it, JBG. And what's up with those Jews and their crazy persecution complex, while we're asking these questions?
So...
Since "commentators of color" say it, it isn't stupid? Or do those commentators get a pass?
I just think it is over and done with. I am sick of those Europeans constantly blaming their failures on what the North Africans did to them. There is nothing inherently North African about being pro-slavery, and Europeans aren't the only people to have been victimized in history. Darn those Europeans.
Thank god there is at least one honest person.
What large organization has McCain run? He acts like a junior officer--concentrating on the tactics of the moment with no clue as to how to set or achieve an over-arching strategy.
Let's see, there were ~ 10 million black Africans captured in Africa and sent to the US. Now, nobody claims that not a single white woman was ever enslaved in Africa, but I will eat my hat if that number even approaches 10,000.
The two evils compared here are simply not of the same magnitude.
I'm not sure how it's possible to write these words without acknowledging that we've already witnessed something similar, only from the opposite side of the political spectrum. If you fear this now, surely it is because the last eight years have made you aware of the possibility? Truly, it seems odd to fear a "difficult to reverse, expansion of government" at this stage of the game.
Similarly, European slave raiders rarely got more than a few miles from their ships, and could directly abduct only thousands. But they soon found a way to obtain slaves from regions far from the coast - they found that there were many established slave traders, who would buy or kidnap black Africans and bring them to coastal trading posts established by the Europeans, to sell for a higher price than their original markets. That was how European and later the American slave ships obtained millions of slaves.
And those slave traders who were plying their trade long before Europeans started buying were Muslims, and their original markets were other Africans, both sub-Saharan and North African. I doubt anyone has any idea how many blacks were carried across the Sahara into slavery...
It's about time. Usually the reverse is true.
McCain does have 13 months of executive experience, 30 years ago, but he oddly omitted it from his campaign bio. And I can't find any instance of anyone noticing this, which I also think is odd.
If he becomes President and has a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a clear majority in the House, wouldn't his pragmatic side tell him to strike while the iron is hot and in such a way that the iron would take a long time to cool, if ever?
That sounds more like zealotry. Pragmatism would lead one to understand that only solutions that most Americans can get behind, and that are reasonable and efficient, are the best way to go. Obama does not strike me, or most of the American public it would seem, as a zealot.
"If he becomes President and has a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a clear majority in the House, wouldn't his pragmatic side tell him to strike while the iron is hot and in such a way that the iron would take a long time to cool, if ever?"
Of course. The question is what he has in mind to forge. I believe that to be a Re-United States. I aim to support him in that endeavor, as it will require much more than a government to achieve.
So, they waited thousands of years for Gandhi before they could accomplish anything?
"Obama is not a "socialist" in any meaningful use of that word (if favoring progressive taxation is "socialist" then the U.S. has been socialist for quite some time -- not really a meaningful use of the term)."
I'm not sure how the latter would prove that the former is not a meaningful definition. Obama wants taxation to be more progressive (and is campaigning against some one who wants it to be less so)- so why wouldn't it be meaningful to describe him as socialist under the definition you are rejecting?
and that wouldn't be all that bad if the guy had any executive experience, or at least had dealt with a crisis at some point. I'm far less concerned about how he will act than how he will react...
LM beat me to it, but I to underscore the point, defining "socialism" to mean "favors progressive taxation" means that the U.S. -- all its presidents, pretty much all its major political leaders for the last century or so -- has been socialist. And that entirely robs the word of its meaning. It's like calling Bush fascist.
Socialism means worker or some other public control of the means of production. Liberalism, and hell, mainstream U.S. conservatism has included backing progressive taxation.
Since "commentators of color" say it, it isn't stupid? Or do those commentators get a pass?
I was unclear. I meant that the "Obama's promised change is a black prez" notion sounded dumb -- since Obama actually has, you know, policy proposals, just like a white candidate? -- but the commentators I'd heard made me think that, yes, someone listening to them could indeed form the valid but mistaken opinion that it's all about the race thang.
I'm not immune myself to appreciating the symbolic value of a former slaveholding nation's electing a black president, but that symbolic value never led me to lift a finger for Jesse Jackson, e.g. If Obama were, say, a Republican conservative, I wouldn't be supporting him just to inspire future generations of black Americans.
Sure you could call a lot of American law socialist under the definition you are rejecting. But unless I'm misunderstanding the word "meaningful" also, it would still be meaningful to say, under that definition, that Obama wants to enact socialist policies.
Because I have no good way of gauging what 300 million people think, I can't prove my linguistic suspicions. I suspect many (non economist, academic) people call redistributive policies socialism, for lack of a better word.
I understand that you guys don't think the above is a meaningful definition. Ok cool, now do people use the word that way, or not? That to my mind is a better indication of a contemporary meaning that your personal (not to my mind convincing) arguments that such a meaning wouldn't be useful.
"The word, however, is used with a great variety of meaning, . . . even by economists and learned critics. The general tendency is to regard as socialistic any interference undertaken by society on behalf of the poor, . . ."
And the point is that a great many people who use the word are misusing it. It just doesn't mean what they think it means.
Now, I suppose if you get enough people to start calling a duck a chicken, eventually a lot of people might start deciding that it's totally correct to say a duck is a kind of chicken because everyone says it is, but that's not really a systematic way to go about defining things.
The fact that a lot of people throw out the word "socialist" without having any clear idea of what it means doesn't make the claim that McCain meant "black" any less silly. But it does illuminate the truth behind what McCain said in that he only used "socialist" as a boogie-man word. It's only intent was to scare people and convey a negative cannotation with very little actual meaning behind it.
Because it's just an empty shell, those predisposed to see racism in everything will see race in the use of the word. Others will see something else.
"Do those who reject Ilya's standard dictionary definition of socialism, in favor apparently of "anyone who supports progressive taxation" consider Teddy Roosevelt a socialist? Because we can certainly define words any way we like, but you define yourself into a pretty lonely fringe if you make that claim."
One Roosevelt on the taking end, the other on the giving (breaking the precedent of what I'd call the inverse of the Bill of Attainder prohibition, thus allowing the government to cut checks directly to individuals without goods or services rendered in return). The result?
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. I agree with the ideal, not the Lenny state muscle behind it.
I suppose 5-6% is "tiny" in one sense of the word, but it still amounted to 650000 people. And in any case, I don't believe the original post meant to compare just to slaves brought to the US.
The expansion is already in progress, with lots more of the same promised by both McCain and Obama.
A victorious McCain might manage to slow things down a tiny bit...but I suspect it would be like trying to block the incoming tide by throwing up a mound of sand in front of it. OTOH, I'm not sure McCain wouldn't be even worse. His mortgage buyout plan is especially appalling, for example.
"A socialist is a person who favors government ownership of the means of production, and government control of all or most important economic activity."
If you'd just take a few minutes to look at our website you'd see how wrong you are.
"We are fighting for socialism, a system where the wealth of society belongs to those who produce it, the working class, and is used in a planned and sustainable way for the benefit of all."
Nothing about "government ownership" or "government control" in there. Thus the PSL, and anyone else who is not openly for government ownership, is not socialist in any useful sense of the term.
Why wouldn't that be systematic? I can think of two systems for defining words - use defines meaning, and the guy who makes the dictionary defines the meaning. Since the meanings seem to predate the dictionaries, I'm guessing we generally use the former.
Ok, unless some one has something interesting to say besides "it just wouldn't be right" without explaining why, I'll let it go at this point. I understand the definition Ilya uses for socialism, but I don't agree with some other commenters assertion that only one definition could possibly be "meaningful" or "systematic".
Then there is no distinction between liberalism, in the 20th century sense, and socialism. Heck, if you use the definition in the link you note I didn't provide, "helping the poor," then all religions (among other institutions) are socialist.
Progressive taxation is something socialists favor, but it's also something that liberals and even many-most conservatives (of the 20th century democratic nations type) favor. So calling Obama a socialist because he favors progressive taxation is meaningless.
I agree that how words are actually used can ultimately influence the meaning of a word. Here, however, the fact that some right-wingers use the term "socialist" to describe this policy as a concious political tactic to link Obama, or, anyone to the left of the far-right, as "socialist" and thus semi-equivalent to Stalinism, is not useful in helping us figure out what the word and concept means.
The evidence does not support slavery as the primary cause of the present culture of underachievement among young blacks, something that has been complained about by such black leaders as Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, and Obama himself. I am old enough to remember a time, back in the 1950s, when black families were intact and held essentially middle-class values and aspirations for the education and advancement of their children. With the end of legal discrimination, they were then well on their way to joining whites in every field and level of achievement. Some of them did, but then along came too many black role models in the entertainment field and the streets who maintained it was cool to be dumb or even criminal. The result was a divide between blacks who rose and the rest that remained behind and rejected the values of achievement. The challenge for the black community today is to salvage that segment, and for that good black role models that are more prominent than gangstas are important.
But it will not be sufficient. In the past the only solution to this kind of problem has been to get youth in a culture of underachievement out of their environments, separate them from one another, and have them be influenced only by adults with high-achievement values. It may take something like military boarding schools. I have watched the military successfully bring underachieving youth, black and white, into a culture of high achievement. If military discipline is not imparted to children by their families, then it will have to be provided by other means.
Obama's idea for mandatory community service might be intended to do this. The details are sketchy. Under the economic circumstances that now seem likely to develop during the next 4-8 years, it may be the only program he may actually be able to carry out.
But a liberal/socialist federal government in difficult economic times, after all the New Deal programs are already in place and failing to be sufficient, is likely to threaten civil liberties in ways that are far, far worse than suppressing talk radio with a new "fairness" regime. I foresee a resurrection of all the worst excesses we have seen in our history, and threats to every right in the Constitution (or implied by the Ninth Amendment). There is nothing like hard times to make government go crazy.
Get out the Tabasco sauce.
North African pirates raided the coast of Europe for slaves and loot for about a thousand years. One ambitious band even attacked Iceland and carried off hundreds of slaves. (This is well documented in Icelandic history and confirmed recently by DNA testing in Morocco.) The total number of Europeans enslaved in this activity is estimated at well over a million. (Bear in mind that that is only about 1,000 per year.) Young women were of course the most prized slaves.
As with my earlier comment on this thread, we did not see the Republicans warning us about this when they were the one party taking control of the government.
I'd like to make my own feelings clear: it's not a disdain for Republicans in this case, since I'm sure they actually feel the same way I do. I hate it when the Democrats get shut out of the executive branch and Congress at the same time. I'd much prefer to see my party control at least one of the houses of Congress. I'm not going to pretend that this is motivated by any such principle as a preference for divided government. I just hate being shut out.
I doubt that nobody claims that, but it doesn't really matter. In touchy ethnic/violence matters like this, constantly leaving out violence that befell a certain ethnic group leads to bigotry (though it may be evidence of bigotry or simple ignorance). If someone constantly said "the Ustachi killed Communists, Partisans, and members of the Allied armies" without ever mentioning that they killed Serbs, my guess is that many of the latter would be pretty irked. If Vikings were said to have "plundered continental Europe" a dozen times in a book that never mentioned their little adventures in Britain, the British should probably object (though I doubt that they would). So I'm wondering where is the outrage, and where is the hat-eating, over massive lacunae like that on the subject of the Africans kidnapping, enslaving, and raping so many Europeans.