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| Adolf Hitler, facing slightly left (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Left's Monstrous Libel
Related source » Socialist or Fascist: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a "socialist". He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism. What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector. Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time. Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous -- something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague. […] It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot -- and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs. What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people -- like themselves -- need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat. […] Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our [so-called] betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.” [emphasis added]
— Thomas Sowell, June 12, 2012 (townhall.com)
Hitler's fascism and Stalin's communism were metastasized monstrosities of socio-political organization. But, contrary to conventional wisdom, they were both entrenched on the extreme left of the political spectrum. Both systemic monstrosities usurped all control of their respective economies.
The principal difference between communism and fascism involved the issue of government ownership of the means of production. In the Soviet Union, the government both controlled the economy and owned the means of production. In Nazi Germany, the government declined ownership of the means of production, which enabled Hitler to control the assignment of credit (for economic success) and blame (for economic failure).
As Thomas Sowell explains, and most serious Americans understand, Barack Obama seeks the power to control the American economy, as well as to assign blame for his failed policies. In so doing, he can, and he does unceasingly, implement re-distributive policy, while blaming [fill in any number of Obama's adversaries] for the disastrous results of his policies. And people like Paul Krugman, who should know all this, are infused with the same pathological elitism.
The moral of this revolting development is that it was the Left's machinations which stigmatized the conservative side of the political spectrum as "fascistic". But that was a monstrous libel. Fascism is the most insidious version of the political Left.
Post 1,828 “It's about the assignment of blame, stupid!”
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