Ron Paul eschews scare-words rhetoric and adheres to the Misesian definition of the term. Text. Video.
I love Dr Paul even more than before. [:D]
This may cause you too OD on love..
In the upcoming elections / race / whatever, it is paramount that he differentiate himself & libertarianism from the “republicans”. Essentially, the more that "anti-government / tea party movement gains credence, the further the “radicals” push… eg. Napolitano:
And I believe Ron will continue to do that, same with Schiff… got to keep calling out both sides. [Y]
Obama is a socialist. Technically, if you support a state, then by definition, you are a socialist, since socialism is simply an economic system in which there are private and publicly owned means of production. How much of a socialist is obviously up for debate. Obama just socialized student loans, he wanted to socialize the entire medical industry. We are obviously on that path. Quite simply, there really isn’t too much more to socialize. Obama is no doubt a corporatist, this is pretty evident.
However, I almost think that Obama is a Marxist. If you read his books, do some research on his background, read testimonials from people who knew him before getting into politics, and just look at how he’s handling things, then you can see it. I mean, his current pastor is a committed Marxist. Obama can’t come out and say “America. I am a Marxist.” No one would vote for him, and he would lose support instantly.
The question I’m unable to answer; Is Obama bankrupting our country on purpose?
Dr Paul stuck to the Misesian definition of Socialism:
The essence of Socialism is this: All the means of production are in the exclusive control of the organized community. This and this alone is Socialism. All other definitions are misleading
(Ludwig Von Mises Socialism: an Economic and Sociological Analysis Liberty Fund, Indianapolis 1981 page 211)
in one of the links on the right hand column, Ron Paul responds to an Obama speech from a year ago and is talking about how the government could not possibly know the best way to allocate capital, and that we have no idea wether or not building such and such a highway is productive, and the MSNBC lady said, “if nobody knows, why not try?”
Unbelievable.
In that same episode of Stossel, Napolitano also questioned the need for an army and a navy. Did anyone else catch that? It was great hearing that said on national television.
But Stossel did say “libertarians don’t believe in ‘no government’”
Some of the comments on that article are just absurdly inane. They don’t even address the point.
The unprincipled and logically inconsistent ones, sure.
If Obama is truly a full blown socialist, it’s not like he’s going to push for a nationalization of the supermarket and clothing industry. He knows that he won’t succeed and everybody will think he’s a nutjob. He only goes as far as he can get away with.
So you can’t say what he actually believes because he’s acting within the realm of politics.
Socialism is a stateless propertyless society with only commons that every one can use, under mutually enforced economic decisions.
Basically akin to how non-human lifeforms in non-human ecosystems live, nothing else.
Nationalization is just supposed to be a means to long-term Socialism by the utopian Socialists, but normally, nationalization just makes you a nationalist, or a statist, nothing else.
And who’s going to be the leader of this community? The has to be some kind of a decision-making body. A state by any other name is still a state.
I won’t spoil it for you. [;)]
Buy the book and read it, Mises at his very best. [Y]
If that clip went on a few more seconds you would hear Napolitano respond to a question of how the army and navy would be funded by asking, “Who says we need an army and a navy?”
He’s being nice. While Mises’ definition is correct, Mises and Rothbard also spoke to the logical error of treating something by name or definition rather than by character. You don’t have to get rid of the stock market and nationalize all the means of production, you merely have to regulate all production such that the government effectively controls it even lacking an outright claim of ownership. Which means in character if not in strict definition, Obama is a socialist. There is not one aspect of human affairs he and his ilk would consider simply outside the proper scope of the government to regulate. They would likely choose to be lax in some areas and strict in others, but that’s the same distinction between a ‘kind’ slave owner and a viscious one.
Ron Paul’s distinction is one of political convenience and made for communications purposes, nothing else. The electorate are ready and willing to varying extents to start differentiating between kind and viscious slave masters vis a vi the state. They are not ready and willing to discuss a lack of a master yet to anywhere near the same degree, so for communications purposes you take baby steps with them as he is doing.
Make no mistake, Obama is a socialist. He would happily try to regulate gravity out of existence, and he and his mindless followers are generally stupid enough to think it’s even possible to do that, and they’d all blame Evil Capitalism for the fact that things still fell to earth after the passage of the Freedom to Levitate anYwhere Indiscriminately aNd without aGgravation, or F.L.Y.I.N.G. Act.
I think this is nonesene and it is also counterproductive. It is also to misread Mises.
What Obama is doing is simply implementing more steps in the direction of the transformation of the market economy into Socialism of the German type. Corporations are no more controlling the government then the different of other special interests groups that would control it in the Socialism of the Marxist or Russian type. Obama would rather have the Marxist type but is politically constrained and therefore, must follow the other path. At the end they would converge to the same thing anyway.
I don’t get this tactic at all. Nobody is going to understand these fine differences anyway. Why confuse the populace. Obama want to control the economy and that’s the the direction he’s pushing for. That’s socialism! The method of implementation is unimportant.
Ron Paul is absolutely correct. Obama is simply a Fascist. The issue is that he is really no more Fascist than the Republicans. Both parties firmly believe that national government through deficit spending can repair economies, bring peace to the world, heal the sick, clean the environment, bring laws to the lawless, etc.
Are we going to take the bate? The false dichotomy of Fascism vs. Socialism.
I think Obama personally is most likely a socialist or Marxist.
However, at this point he is merely a puppet for the corporate interests that elevated him from an unknown on the streets of Chicago to the White House. Certainly he knows that they made him and they can destroy him as well if he doesn’t continue to assist them with their corporatist agenda.