Bart DePalma's Blog
February 3, 2012
Radical-In-Chief
National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz wrote an outstanding book entitled
Radical-In-Chief
, in which he performed yeoman work unearthing Barack Obama's socialist associations prior to being elected President. Radical-In-Chief was an invaluable source for my own book, Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste and I highly recommend it to you as well.
Here is an interview with Mr. Kurtz discussing his work.
Here is an interview with Mr. Kurtz discussing his work.
January 26, 2012
Agitprop And Superstition
I was surfing through the Huffington Post for silly blogs to skewer, an admittedly guilty pleasure of mine, and found a real gem. Christian Parenti of the hard left Nation magazine called for "storm socialism" save us from big storms caused by manmade climate change. We have angered Mother Nature and the only cure is more government.
A primary theme of my book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste is how Saul Alinsky was the leading American practitioner of socialist agitprop, which aimed at "rubbing raw the sores of discontent" to scare the middle class into accepting "radical change." Barack Obama and other proponents of "storm socialism" like Mr. Parenti apply this Alinsky principle and add a heavy dose of old fashioned weather superstition to scare us into accepting government direction of the economy to save us from the angry weather gods.
This combination of agitprop and superstition reminds me of a scene from Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypso where the "big government" of the ancient Maya are sacrificing there people to convince the angry sun god to stop inflicting a drought on the nation:
http://youtu.be/EIyZsABI8Gk
A primary theme of my book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste is how Saul Alinsky was the leading American practitioner of socialist agitprop, which aimed at "rubbing raw the sores of discontent" to scare the middle class into accepting "radical change." Barack Obama and other proponents of "storm socialism" like Mr. Parenti apply this Alinsky principle and add a heavy dose of old fashioned weather superstition to scare us into accepting government direction of the economy to save us from the angry weather gods.
This combination of agitprop and superstition reminds me of a scene from Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypso where the "big government" of the ancient Maya are sacrificing there people to convince the angry sun god to stop inflicting a drought on the nation:
http://youtu.be/EIyZsABI8Gk
January 25, 2012
What Is Asymmetric Socialism?
The left is now arguing that Obamacare is actually a conservative policy rather than socialism because health insurers are still privately owned. How is a conservative supposed to respond to this contention?
Now this argument has superficial appeal because most Americans believe that socialism is where the government owns businesses to direct the economy and redistribute wealth. This is indeed the definition of classical socialism, but classical socialism is not the only kind of socialism.
The two necessary parts of socialism are the government directing the economy to redistribute wealth from the folks who create it to those the government prefers. However, the government does not need to own an industry to accomplish these socialist goals.
After the United States won the Cold War and the Soviet Empire collapsed, American socialism evolved into an asymmetric form where the government declined to nationalize businesses in favor of abusing its regulatory, taxing and spending powers to reduce businesses to the status of civil servants. While a business may remain privately owned, the government directs its administrative operations, tells it what to produce, and orders the rest of us to buy the resulting product. American socialists then tell us that the resulting policy is actually a reform of capitalism rather than socialism.
In Chapter 10 of my book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste , I describe the historical roots of asymmetric socialism, how Obama employed it to enact Obamacare and his "clean energy economy," and why these policies are not progressivism and certainly not capitalism. You can read Chapter 10 for free here.
I would enjoy hearing your opinions of my theory of socialism.
Now this argument has superficial appeal because most Americans believe that socialism is where the government owns businesses to direct the economy and redistribute wealth. This is indeed the definition of classical socialism, but classical socialism is not the only kind of socialism.
The two necessary parts of socialism are the government directing the economy to redistribute wealth from the folks who create it to those the government prefers. However, the government does not need to own an industry to accomplish these socialist goals.
After the United States won the Cold War and the Soviet Empire collapsed, American socialism evolved into an asymmetric form where the government declined to nationalize businesses in favor of abusing its regulatory, taxing and spending powers to reduce businesses to the status of civil servants. While a business may remain privately owned, the government directs its administrative operations, tells it what to produce, and orders the rest of us to buy the resulting product. American socialists then tell us that the resulting policy is actually a reform of capitalism rather than socialism.
In Chapter 10 of my book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste , I describe the historical roots of asymmetric socialism, how Obama employed it to enact Obamacare and his "clean energy economy," and why these policies are not progressivism and certainly not capitalism. You can read Chapter 10 for free here.
I would enjoy hearing your opinions of my theory of socialism.
January 18, 2012
Airbrushing History
Inside a cover Newsweek bluntly entitled Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?, self-admitted Obama groupie Andrew Sullivan begins the left's airbrushing of Obama into a mainstream moderate.
After repeating the usual Dem spin of Obama's first recovery-less recession since the Great Depression as the prevention of a Second Great Depression and then blaming Bush three years after he left office, Sullivan tries to transform the socialist Obamacare into a moderate Republican proposal.
As I describe in my book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste , Obamacare faithfully applies the principles of German Zwangswirtshaft socialism - government creation of a health care monopoly which will be limited to selling a handful of government designed policies, to be sold and marketed in government designed venues, whose administrative expenses are designated and capped by the government, and whose product we are mandated to purchase. As Vice President Joe Biden assured administration supporters: "You know we are going to control the insurance companies."
Instead of addressing what Obamacare actually mandates, Sullivan instead engages in the false syllogism that: (1) then Massachusetts Governor Romney designed the template for Obamacare, (2) Romney can't be a socialist because he is a Republican, thus (3) Obama and Obamacare cannot be socialist.
The sad truth is that GOP leaders are hardly immune to the recent temptation to dabble in socialist command economics and their ideas do not make Obamacare any less socialist. Nomination front runner Mitt Romney's Frankenstein creation Romneycare is undeniably socialist, something that should give his supporters serious pause as they consider their nomination vote in South Carolina and the later primary states. Indeed, I spend an entire chapter in Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste describing how George W. Bush's lawlessness with TARP and other "bailouts" provided Barack Obama with the tools to nationalize General Motors and Chrysler, and put teeth in his attempts to direct the banks.
2012 is a pivotal election and we all need to look beyond the obvious media propaganda and closely scrutinize the records of both Mr. Obama and his would be GOP rivals.
After repeating the usual Dem spin of Obama's first recovery-less recession since the Great Depression as the prevention of a Second Great Depression and then blaming Bush three years after he left office, Sullivan tries to transform the socialist Obamacare into a moderate Republican proposal.
As I describe in my book Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste , Obamacare faithfully applies the principles of German Zwangswirtshaft socialism - government creation of a health care monopoly which will be limited to selling a handful of government designed policies, to be sold and marketed in government designed venues, whose administrative expenses are designated and capped by the government, and whose product we are mandated to purchase. As Vice President Joe Biden assured administration supporters: "You know we are going to control the insurance companies."
Instead of addressing what Obamacare actually mandates, Sullivan instead engages in the false syllogism that: (1) then Massachusetts Governor Romney designed the template for Obamacare, (2) Romney can't be a socialist because he is a Republican, thus (3) Obama and Obamacare cannot be socialist.
The sad truth is that GOP leaders are hardly immune to the recent temptation to dabble in socialist command economics and their ideas do not make Obamacare any less socialist. Nomination front runner Mitt Romney's Frankenstein creation Romneycare is undeniably socialist, something that should give his supporters serious pause as they consider their nomination vote in South Carolina and the later primary states. Indeed, I spend an entire chapter in Never Allow A Crisis To Go To Waste describing how George W. Bush's lawlessness with TARP and other "bailouts" provided Barack Obama with the tools to nationalize General Motors and Chrysler, and put teeth in his attempts to direct the banks.
2012 is a pivotal election and we all need to look beyond the obvious media propaganda and closely scrutinize the records of both Mr. Obama and his would be GOP rivals.
