Socialism: The Mystery Word

[snuffbox]

Does anybody who likes to speak of 'socialism' actually know what that word means? This reminds me of the radio guy last year who was caught accusing Obama of 'appeasement' but, upon confrontation, could not explain what that particular word means.

Here's what I mean:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0409/Bachus_says_theres_17_socialists_in_House.html

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

Speaking as an actual socialist, no. There is not one person in U.S. politics (Save Bernie Sanders) in general who knows what it means, and in particular no one in the rump caucus of protofascists and screeching harpies in the Republican Party.

 

[snuffbox]

Can you explain your attraction to socialism, please?

I do not subscribe to the idea myself but I will try not to mindlessly argue with you about it.

 

[bigolsmitty]

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/just_53_say_capitalism_better_than_socialism

 

[snuffbox]

And, of that 47 percent (and the 53 against, for that matter), how many have any idea what socialism is?

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

Can you explain your attraction to socialism, please?

I do not subscribe to the idea myself but I will try not to mindlessly argue with you about it.

Capitalism is necessarily predicated on having an upper and lower class (or winners and losers, to use Int'l Trade terminology.) Yet, we ascribe to the belief, however nominal, that all persons have fundamental equality and dignity. From my own perspective and research, I think socialism is the only economic system which has the potential to put this into place. This does not imply that I'm an orthodox Stalinist; far from it. My own variant of socialism might be best described as being "Libertarian Socialist". In particular, I believe in a Libertarian Socialist model known as Parecon (or Participatory Economics), which should be easily found on Google.

I think a more detailed overview of my brand of socialism can be found at www.newsocialist.org, which you should check out if you're interested.

 

[snuffbox]

I will check out both items. It is certainly always important to distinguish socialism in theory vs. socialism in practice (dictatorship).

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

I will check out both items. It is certainly always important to distinguish socialism in theory vs. socialism in practice (dictatorship).

True, but that being said, as a socialist and a student of history, I think it's important to make note that dictatorship is not a feature inherent to socialism-In the 20th century alone, there have been and currently are more dictatorships which follow a capitalist economic structure, whether in its free market or state capitalist variants.

 

[Brooklyn Zoo]

Yeah, there's never been a true socialist country in the world. The closest right now would have the state of Kerala in India.

In a communist nation you're supposed to have economic justice and democratization. If you have one or neither, you're not really a "socialist" nation. I'd consider myself socialist as well.

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

Yeah, there's never been a true socialist country in the world. The closest right now would have the state of Kerala in India.

In a communist nation you're supposed to have economic justice and democratization. If you have one or neither, you're not really a "socialist" nation. I'd consider myself socialist as well.

Bingo. Whatever potential the USSR had was completely derailed by the time Stalin consolidated power; The PRC has been state capitalist for years.

 

[Nightwing]

While there might be more capitalist dictators, the vast majority of socialist countries tend to be dictatorships. I think you meant to say that "Dictatorship isn't necessarily inherent to socialism" in the above statement.

And you wouldn't count Dennis Kucinich as a socialist?

 

[bigolsmitty]

I am not a socialist, but I think I would probably fall somewhere in the middle in a European country, voting for the Social Democrats some and the center-right parties (Christian Democrats, Gaullists, etc.) some. I dunno, maybe I'd just end up voting for the left party all the time.

 

[Nightwing]

In browsing through the wiki, I'm not particularly liking it.

For example, wouldn't paying more to coal miners (using the example found there) drastically increase the price of coal one way or the other? And what's the incentive to go beyond coal mining if you can make more money, work less hours, and need almost no education to do it? I'd like to hear your refutation of my argument (as simple and undeveloped as it is), if you don't mind.

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

In browsing through the wiki, I'm not particularly liking it.

For example, wouldn't paying more to coal miners (using the example found there) drastically increase the price of coal one way or the other? And what's the incentive to go beyond coal mining if you can make more money, work less hours, and need almost no education to do it? I'd like to hear your refutation of my argument (as simple and undeveloped as it is), if you don't mind.

It depends on what you mean by price. From an introduction to Parecon:

Markets also mis-price items, taking into account only the impact of work and consumption on the immediate buyers and sellers but not on those affected peripherally, including those affected by pollution or, for that matter, by positive side effects. This exclusion means markets routinely violate ecological balance and sustainability while subjecting all but the wealthiest communities to collective debit in water, air, sound, and public availabilities

.

And this (which is quite long):

Okay, markets fail for your humanist values, but we do need efficiency. They are good for that, aren't they? So good, we have to put up with all theother flaws, no?

Increasing the value of goods and services produced and decreasing the unpleasantness of what we have to do to get them are two ways producers can increase profits in a market economy. Competitive pressures drive producers to do both, a situation which is sometimes desirable, as, for example, when it leads to innovations in methods of production. But generally undesirable is the maneuvering to appropriate a greater share of the goods and services produced by externalizing costs such as pollution, and competitive market pressures drive producers to pursue this route to greater profitability just as assiduously as any other. The problem is that, while the first kind of behavior often serves the social interest as well as the private interests of producers, the second kind of behavior does not. When buyers or sellers promote their private interests by avoiding responsibility for costs of their actions and pushing them onto those who are not party to the market exchange, as with generating pollution and not cleaning it up, their behavior introduces a misallocation of productive resources and a consequent decrease in the overall value of goods and services produced.

The positive side of market incentives has received great attention and admiration, starting with Adam Smith who used the term “invisible hand” to characterize it. He meant, of course, that competitive pressures to profit induce many efficiency increasing choices, such as employing more productive technologies and guiding actors to seek more productive and less expensive options. The darker side of market incentives has been neglected and underestimated. Two modern exceptions are Ralph d’Arge and E.K. Hunt, who coined the less famous but equally appropriate concept, “invisible foot” to describe the socially counter-productive behavior of foisting costs onto others that markets also promote.

Market advocates seldom ask: Where are firms most likely to find the easiest opportunities to expand their profits? How easy is it to increase the size or quality of the economic pie and thereby accrue more? How easy is it to reduce the time or discomfort that it takes to bake the pie, thereby accruing more? Alternatively, how easy is it to enlarge one’s slice of the pie by externalizing a cost or by appropriating a benefit without payment, even if the overall size or quality of the pie declines as a result? Why should we assume that it is infinitely easier to expand one’s own profits through socially productive behavior that increases the size of the pie than through socially unproductive or even counter-productive behavior that actually reduces the size of the pie? Yet this implicit assumption lies behind the view that markets are efficiency machines.

Market advocates fail to notice that the same feature of market exchanges primarily responsible for making business easy to undertake—the exclusion of all affected parties but two from a transaction—is also a major source of potential gain for the buyer and seller. When the buyer and seller of an automobile strike their mutually convenient deal, the size of the benefit they have to divide between them is greatly enlarged by externalizing the costs onto others of the acid rain produced by car production, as well as the costs of urban smog, noise pollution, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions caused by car consumption. Those who pay these costs and thereby enlarge car-maker profits and car-consumer benefits are easy marks for car sellers and buyers because they are geographically and chronologically dispersed and because the magnitude of the effect of each specific transaction on each of them is small and varies widely from person to person. Individually the mass of folks who are separately affected each have little incentive to insist on being party to the transaction. Collectively they face formidable obstacles to forming a voluntary coalition to effectively represent a large number of people, each of whom have little and different amounts at stake. Nor is the problem solved by awarding victims of external effects a property right not to be victimized without their consent. Moreover, making markets perfectly competitive or making the cost of entering a market zero (even if either were realistically possible) would not eliminate the opportunity for this kind of rent-seeking behavior.

That is, even if there were countless perfectly informed sellers and buyers in every market, even if the appearance of the slightest differences in average profit rates in different industries induced instantaneous self-correcting entries and exits of firms, and even if every economic participant were equally powerful and therefore equally powerless—that is, even if we fully embraced the utterly unreal fantasies of market enthusiasts—as long as there were numerous external parties with small but unequal interests in market transactions, those external parties would face much greater obstacles to a full and effective representation of their collective interest than the obstacles faced by the buyer and seller in the exchange. And it is this unavoidable inequality in their ability to represent their own interests that makes external parties easy prey to rent-seeking behavior on the part of buyers and sellers.

Moreover, even if we could organize a market economy wherein every participant were as powerful as every other and no one ever faced a less powerful opponent in a market exchange—another ridiculous fiction—this would still not change the fact that each of us has small interests at stake in many transactions in which we are neither buyer or seller. Yet the sum total interest of all these external parties can be considerable compared to the interests of the two who are presumably the most affected—the buyer and seller. It is the difficulty of representing the collective interests of those with lesser individual interests that creates an unavoidable inequality in power, which, in turn, gives rise to the opportunity for individually profitable but socially counter-productive rent-seeking on the part of buyers and sellers.

But of course the real world bears little resemblance to a hypothetical game where it is impossible to increase one’s market power so that there is no reason to try. Instead, in the real world it is just as rational to pursue ways to increase one’s power vis-à-vis other buyers or sellers as it is to search for ways to increase the size or quality of the economic pie or reduce the time or discomfort necessary to bake it. In the real world there are consumers with little information, time, or means to defend their interests. There are small innovative firms for giants like IBM and Microsoft to buy up instead of tackling the hard work of innovation themselves. There are common property resources whose productivity can be appropriated at little or no cost to the beneficiary as they are over-exploited at the expense of future generations. And there is a government run by politicians whose careers rely mainly on their ability to raise campaign money, begging to be plied for corporate welfare programs financed at taxpayer expense.

In short, in a realistic world of unequal economic power the most effective profit maximizing strategy is often to maneuver at the expense of those with less economic power so as to re-slice the pie (even while shrinking it) rather than to work to expand the pie. And of course, the same prevails internationally as US-based economist Robert Lekachman points out with eloquent restraint:

Children and economists may think that the men at the head of our great corporations spend their time thinking about new ways to please the customers or improve the efficiency of their factories and offices. What they actually concentrate on is enlisting their government to protect their foreign and domestic interests.

In any case, leftist advocates of markets concede that externalities lead to inefficient allocations and that non-competitive market structures and disequilibrating forces add additional sources of inefficiencies. And they also concede that efficiency requires policies designed to internalize external effects, curb monopolistic practices, and ameliorate market disequilibria. But there are also many significant failings of markets that market admirers do not concede, and their sum total importance is undeniable.

1 External effects are the rule rather than the exception.

As E. K. Hunt explained:

The Achilles heel of welfare economics is its treatment of externalities ....When reference is made to externalities, one usually takes as a typical example an upwind factory that emits large quantities of sulfur oxides and particulate matter inducing rising probabilities of emphysema, lung cancer, and other respiratory diseases to residents downwind, or a strip-mining operation that leaves an irreparable aesthetic scar on the countryside. The fact is, however, that most of the millions of acts of production and consumption in which we daily engage involve externalities. In a market economy any action of one individual or enterprise which induces pleasure or pain to any other individual or enterprise constitutes an externality. Since the vast majority of productive and consumptive acts are social, i.e., to some degree they involve more than one person, it follows that they will involve externalities. Our table manners in a restaurant, the general appearance of our house, our yard or our person, our personal hygiene, the route we pick for a joy ride, the time of day we mow our lawn, or nearly any one of the thousands of ordinary daily acts, all affect, to some degree, the pleasures or happiness of others. The fact is externalities are totally pervasive.

2 There are no convenient or reliable procedures in market economies for estimating the magnitude of external effects.

This means that accurate correctives, or what economists call “Pigouvian” taxes, after the British economist Arthur Pigou (1877-1959), are hard to calculate even in an isolated market. Any hope of accurately estimating external effects in market economies lies with actors’ willingness to accept damage surveys which have well-known biases and discrepancies that can be exploited by special interests. And the fact that estimates derived from willingness to accept damage surveys are commonly four times as high as estimates derived from willingness to pay surveys is hardly comforting, when, in theory, they should be roughly equal. Suffice to say, this problem is another thorn in the side of markets.

3 Because they are unevenly dispersed throughout the industrial matrix, the task of correcting for external effects is even more daunting.

In the real world, where private interests and power take pre- cedence over economic efficiency, the would-be beneficiaries of accurate corrective taxes are usually dispersed and powerless compared to those who would have to pay such taxes. This makes it unlikely that full correctives would be enacted—even if they could be accurately calculated.

4 Because consumer preferences are at least partially affected by the economy—the technical term for which is that they are endogenous—the degree of misallocation that results from predictable under-correction for external effects will increase, or “snowball” over time.

As noted earlier, people are affected by their economic conditions and activities and they will learn to adjust their preferences to the biases created by external effects in the market price system. Consumers will increase their preference and demand for goods whose production and/or consumption entails negative external effects but whose market prices fail to reflect these costs and are therefore too low; and will decrease their preference and demand for goods whose production and/or consumption entails positive external effects but whose market prices fail to reflect these benefits and are therefore too high. In short, we adjust ourselves to benefit from what we see to be systematic bargains and to avoid what we see to be systematic scams. While this adjustment is individually rational to take advantage of market biases, it is socially irrational and inefficient since it leads to greater demand for the goods that the market already wrongly overproduces, and lowers demand for the goods the market already under produces. Morever, because the effects of this phenomenon are cumulative and self-enforcing, over time the degree of inefficiency in the economy will grow.

The upshot of these points is that the invisible foot operates on a par with the invisible hand. The degree of allocative inefficiency due to external effects is significant. Hope for “Pigouvian” correctives is a pipe dream. Relative prices predictably diverge ever more widely from accurate measures of full social costs and benefits as consumers adjust their endogenous preferences to individually benefit from inevitable market biases. In sum, convenient deals with mutual benefits for buyer and seller should not be confused with economic efficiency. When some kinds of preferences are consistently under-represented because of transaction cost and free rider problems (wherein folks get the benefit of public goods without paying for them), when some resources are consistently over- exploited because they are common rather than private property, when consumers adjust their preferences to biases in the price system, and when profits or surpluses come as often from greater power as greater contribution, theory predicts free market exchange will result in a misallocation of resources. And when markets are less than perfect (which they always are), and fail to reach equilibrium instantaneously (which they always do), the results will be that much worse.

While markets are currently widely praised, perhaps before moving on we should point out that we are not markets’ only detractors. Consider the US Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow’s observations that:

Few markets can ever have been as competitive as those that flourished in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century, when infants became deformed as they toiled their way to an early death in the pits and mills of the Black Country. And there is no lack of examples today to confirm the fact also that well-functioning markets have no innate tendency to promote excellence in any form. They offer no resistance to forces making for a descent into cultural barbarity or moral depravity.

Or US Nobel Prize economist James Tobin’s observation that:

The only sure result [of free market Reaganomics] … are redistribution of income, wealth, and power—from government to private enterprises, from workers to capitalists, and from poor to rich.

Or US novelist Edward Bellamy’s (1850-1898) observation that:

According to our ideas, buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilization.

Or, arch marketeer US Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s recent observation that:

The greatest problem facing our country is the breaking down into two classes, those who have and those who have not. The growing differences between the incomes of the skilled and the less skilled, the educated and the uneducated, pose a very real danger. If that widening rift continues, we’re going to be in terrible trouble. The idea of having a class of people who never communicate with their neighbors—those very neighbors who assume the responsibility for providing their basic needs—is extremely unpleasant and discouraging. And it cannot last. We’ll have a civil war. We really cannot remain a democratic, open society that is divided into two classes. In the long run, that’s the greatest single danger.

A summary of findings regarding market inefficiencies is that the cybernetic, incentive, and allocative properties of markets involve a pervasive bias against discovering, expressing, and developing needs that require social rather than individual activity for fulfillment. Markets do not provide concrete information about how people’s decisions affect the life prospects of others or vice versa. They do not even provide accurate summaries of the social benefits and costs associated with what people decide to do since markets mis-evaluate external effects—and external effects are the rule rather than the exception. Actual market allocations under supply social goods and activities and over supply individual goods and activities. They establish incentives for individuals to wean themselves of needs that require socially coordinated intercourse and accentuate needs that can be met individually. Moreover, markets reward competitive behavior and penalize cooperative behavior.

In sum, markets not only erode solidarity, they also systemat- ically mis-charge purchasers so that over time, preferences that are individually rational for people to develop combine with biases inherent in market allocations to yield outcomes increasingly further from those that would have maximized human fulfillment. And to top it off, markets generate gross economic inequality, severely distorted decision-making influence, and class division and rule. In the end, the fears of “utopian” critics who decry the socially alienating effects of markets prove more to the point than the assurances of so-called “scientific” economists that markets are ideal allocation institutions. Regarding markets, abolitionism is an appropriate attitude.

 

[NoCalMike]

If you ask the republican party, or more importantly the conservative pundits like Glenn Beck & Sean Hannity, they would say Socialism is returning to the tax rates under Bill Clinton. Going from 36%-39% for the top 1%, yes folks THAT is what the big "outrage" is over.

Most of these pundits would seemingly think anything before Reagan was "socialist"

 

[snuffbox]

A better definition for 'socialism' as given by television/radio celebrities like Beck/Hannity/etc: "Whatever we dont happen to like"

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

There was a clip I saw a few months ago where Beck claimed "We're in Inflation now!" Just think about that one.

 

[griffinmills]

In browsing through the wiki, I'm not particularly liking it.

For example, wouldn't paying more to coal miners (using the example found there) drastically increase the price of coal one way or the other? And what's the incentive to go beyond coal mining if you can make more money, work less hours, and need almost no education to do it? I'd like to hear your refutation of my argument (as simple and undeveloped as it is), if you don't mind.

I very much enjoyed BurningPirateShipSex long quote on the Invisible Hand, Invisible Foot and market inequalities. It was an excellent, smart, answer to the first question on the price of coal. Essentially, coal is likely already mis-priced because nobody has to weigh the cost of what it does to the environment, humanity and society. It's a bit of a sidestep to a "yes/no the price will/won't change" direct answer but it's a really informative piece and I really appreciated it. The fact is, you're already paying more for it in ways not involving money, I suppose.

As for the second answer, I'm not sure it's really been addressed. I knew very little about socialism before jumping into this topic, hoping to be informed, so I dare not offer any answers. I will say that this thread has given me cause to expand my mind and research this stuff myself though!

From a nigh-total ignorant POV I would think plenty of folks simply wouldn't want to be coal miners because they don't like doing it. I mean, it has a history of being a rather high mortality rate, filthy, hard working job! Maybe we need a more neutral profession choice.

 

[bigolsmitty]

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) puts the number of socialists in the House at 17.

“Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists,” Bachus told local government leaders on Thursday, according to the Birmingham News.

Bachus gave the specific number of House socialists when pressed later by a reporter.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/04/the_full_mccarthy.php

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

And again, I don't see the problem. Socialist parties in some shape or form have either governed or been strong opposition in almost every country in the world, save the United States. Canada boasts of having the first openly socialist head of government in North America (the Rev. Tommy Douglas-the founder of medicare, and who was voted "Greatest Canadian" a few years back in a national poll and TV broadcast.) Latin America has been steadily moving leftward for years now, with most of the major countries being governed by socialist or Left coalition parties. And yet, in America, it's still being used as some sort of boogeyman phrase.

 

[bigolsmitty]

Yeah, me neither. There are probably more than 17 who could reasonably be called social democrats.

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

And even then, there's been a dilution of the term; As Robert Gilpin points out, most people who claim to be "socialists" or "social democrats" are actually Keynesian liberals.

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

Here's a fun and disturbing article from the folks at Media Matters:

http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200904100033

Pandemic: Limbaugh's Obama Derangement Syndrome spreads through conservative media

Summary: Numerous conservative media figures have followed Rush Limbaugh's lead in making increasingly dire predictions about the consequences that policies sought by Obama and other progressives might have for the country.

As Media Matters for America has documented, since President Obama's inauguration, "Number One voice for conservatism" Rush Limbaugh has made numerous ominous, even apocalyptic claims about the impact policies pursued by President Obama and other progressives might have on the United States, often while invoking fears of rising socialism, communism, and tyranny. For example, on the February 12 broadcast of his radio show, Limbaugh "thank[ed]" Obama for "doing the job that everybody expects of you, taking every tradition and institution that defined this country's greatness and trying to rip it to shreds." Similarly, on March 18, Limbaugh claimed that "everyone in the White House" is "[p]erfectly timed, perfectly programmed, perfectly educated to destroy capitalism ... and they're in the process of doing it." And on March 30, Limbaugh stated, "Based on what we've seen with General Motors and the banks, if [Obama] fails, America is saved. Barack Obama's policies and their failure is the only hope we've got to maintain the America of our founding." Over the past month, other prominent conservative voices have followed Limbaugh's lead in making increasingly dire predictions about the consequences that policies sought by Obama and other progressives might have for the country.

This alarmism is part of a recent eruption of extremist rhetoric in the conservative media; as Media Matters has noted, since January, conservatives in the media have also warned of impending socialism, fascism, communism, Nazism, McCarthyism, and Marxism, or used such language to describe Obama or other Democrats. Moreover, since Obama's inauguration, conservative media figures have asserted or suggested that U.S. sovereignty may give way to a one-world government and have warned their audiences that Obama will seize their guns. And Fox News has actively promoted what it has branded "FNC Tax Day Tea Parties."

Sean Hannity

On the April 7 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Sean Hannity said, "Robert Gates ought to resign, and resign now. Because if Robert Gates wants to preside over the single dumbest defense scale-down in American history that puts us on a pre-9-11 footing, I would not want that on my watch. I wouldn't accept it on my watch. And for him to be, you know, wanting this position more than standing up for what's right is frankly surprising to me, and I thought that was one of the better choices of Obama."
On the April 7 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity compared the rhetoric of Obama to that of Franklin Roosevelt and asked, "Was that rhetoric similar in terms of the class warfare and the idea that America's no longer the land of the free and the land of opportunity, but the land of the nanny state, where the government will take care of all -- take away all your fears?"

On the April 6 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity falsely claimed that Obama plans to cut the defense budget, saying, "[H]ow dangerous is this road we're now on? You know, overseas contingency operation and you know -- what's the other one? -- man-caused disasters, if we believe [Homeland Security Secretary] Janet Napolitano. How dangerous is the mentality? We're going to cut defense." Earlier in the broadcast, Hannity said, "President Obama's trip to Europe culminated this morning with a speech that could have disastrous implications for America as it reveals a pre-9-11 appeasement mentality and approach to national security that is a threat to the United States."

On the March 30 edition of his Fox News program, while discussing the Obama administration's auto bailout plan with syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Dick Morris, Hannity said, "The federal government -- and I don't think I overstate this for our audience -- is destroying our economic system as we currently know it. You have written that it's socialism, and it's mismanaged socialism."
Also on the March 30 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity said of the Obama administration's auto bailout plan, "[T]his is just the beginning. The administration is on a mission to hijack capitalism in favor of collectivism, to turn health care into a nationalized affair, and to redistribute the wealth of America. The Bolsheviks have already arrived, and they're here."

A March 26 Hannity promotion asked, "Is the budget a way to completely control our lives? And could it destroy us?"

On the March 24 edition of his radio show, Hannity said, "If the government takes too much money and nationalizes everything, I'm telling you, there are gonna be dire consequences, because we're gonna -- just like if it was a terror attack against America, Americans will get hurt."

On the March 25 edition of his Fox News show, Hannity said to guest Newt Gingrich, "So if we put all these things together -- that they control executive pay, that they can take over firms, retroactively tax people or target individuals as they did -- you used the term 'dictatorship.' That moves America towards a dictatorship?" Gingrich responded, "Look, it absolutely moves you towards a political dictatorship."
On the March 16 edition of his Fox News show, Hannity said, "If we can't use the term 'war on terror,' if we can't use the term 'enemy combatants,' it sounds to me like in many ways, even linguistically, we have literally, you know, surrendered."

Glenn Beck

On the April 6 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Glenn Beck warned that Obama "will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun. He will make them more expensive; he'll tax them out of existence. He will because he has said he would. He will tax your gun or take your gun away one way or another."

On the March 30 edition of his Fox News program, Beck aired a graphic portraying Obama and other Democratic leaders as vampires, and said, "The government is full of vampires, and they are trying to suck the lifeblood out of the economy." Beck then suggested "driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers."
On the March 27 edition of his Fox News program, Beck said, "Yesterday, the Senate passed a watered-down version of the AmeriCorps bill, a.k.a. the GIVE Act, which apparently we have problems with now. It basically indoctrinates your child into community service through the federal government."

On the March 10 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Beck said, "I read an article on Bloomberg last night that said the Manchurian Candidate couldn't destroy us faster than Barack Obama. If you were planning a sleeper to come in and become the president of the United States and dismantle us and take us down, this is how he would do it."
On the March 2 edition of his Fox News program, Beck claimed that Obama's proposal to reduce the tax rate at which families earning more than $250,000 per year can take itemized deductions (including charitable giving) to 28 percent "involves enslaving people" and is "evil."

Dick Morris

On the April 9 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, Morris reiterated his false claim that Obama ceded U.S. sovereignty to international economic regulators at the G-20 summit, and said, "What has been driving me crazy in the last few days is that last week, the president basically gave away our economic sovereignty to Europe."
On the April 6 edition of Hannity, Morris falsely claimed that in signing the G-20 communiqué establishing a new Financial Stability Board (FSB) at the Group of 20 economic summit in London, Obama had ceded U.S. sovereignty to international economic regulators: "Basically, from an economic standpoint, he's repealed [the Declaration of Independence]. We no longer have economic sovereignty."

On the April 3 edition of America's Newsroom, Morris falsely claimed of the FSB, "t effectively ceded massive areas of American sovereignty to Europe and to the global economic mavens." Morris later claimed that "this literally is a massive surrender of sovereignty to an essentially European body."

On the March 31 edition of Fox News' Your World, Morris discussed his theory that Obama ceded sovereignty at the G-20 summit, and said, "Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the U.N.'s going to take over' -- well, they're beginning to have a case."

Michael Savage

On the March 20 edition of The Savage Nation, Savage said, "Obama has a plan to force children into a paramilitary domestic army. It was exposed yesterday on WorldNetDaily."
On the March 9 broadcast of The Savage Nation, Savage declared that the American people are "watching a dictatorship emerge" out of Obama's presidency and added: "I think it is time to start talking about impeachment. Somebody's got to get this guy under control. He's out of control."

Frank Gaffney

On the April 7 broadcast of KSFO's The Lee Rodgers Program, Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney said of Obama's call to seek "broader engagement" with the Muslim world based on "mutual respect," "It seems as though how Barack Obama spells respect is S-U-B-M-I-S-S-I-O-N."

On March 17, Gaffney wrote in The Washington Times, "President Obama on Friday reiterated for the umpteenth time his determination to develop a 'new relationship' with the Muslim world. On this occasion, the audience were the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Unfortunately, it increasingly appears that, in so doing, he will be embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood -- an organization dedicated to promoting the theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah and that has the self-described mission of 'destroying Western civilization from within.' "

Other conservative cable figures

On the April 2 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked, "Is President Obama selling out America? That is the subject of this evening's 'Talking Points Memo.' " O'Reilly later added, "Key question: Where does Barack Obama stand? Are the right-wing pundits correct? Is he down with the global-justice jihad?"

On the 31 March edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, host Lou Dobbs said of the Pay for Performance Act, "We are moving toward a combination of corporate power and political power that is so disturbingly similar to what we witnessed in Italy in the 1930s that it's not funny."

On the March 31 edition of America's Newsroom, Fox Business Network contributor Stuart Varney said of the Obama administration's plan to extend further federal government aid to GM, "[N]ow you're in the position where the government somehow has to coerce or force us all into buying the small cars that it insists Detroit puts out."
On the March 24 edition of Fox News' Studio B with Shepard Smith, Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano discussed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's financial bailout plan and said, "I would now argue that the Obama administration is trashing the Constitution in order to micromanage the economy, Soviet-style. Remember when the Soviet Union managed the economy from Moscow? There were empty shelves on all of their stores, and nobody prospered, and there was no incentive to get ahead. Without the profit motive -- without the opportunity to get ahead, your economy will collapse, and Tim Geithner should know that."

On the March 4 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough asserted, "This crisis that we're in is a crisis of where we spent too much and borrowed too much. By Republicans, right? So the Democrats' answer to that is spend more and borrow more." He later added that "both parties have -- are bankrupting us. They're moving us closer to European-style socialism, according to Newsweek. That's not a right-wing claim, it's the truth."

Other conservative radio hosts

On the April 6 edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight, radio host Steve Malzberg said of Obama, "I would think that most independent-minded people would understand what this man is all about, that this man does not love this country, that this man is trying to do what Hugo Chavez has done to Venezuela."

During the April 5 edition of the syndicated program The McLaughlin Group, radio host Monica Crowley claimed the G-20 communiqué is the "the first step to abrogating American sovereignty here, because ... it is going to allow European bureaucrats to step in, not just on the hedge fund regulation and the other explicit things that they agreed to, but buried deep down in this communiqué was the ability for European bureaucrats sitting in Brussels to decide what kind of executive compensation American executives should -- ", at which point Financial Times U.S. managing editor Chrystia Freeland interjected, "No, there was no authority like that there, Monica." Crowley responded, "I read it in the communiqué this morning."

On the April 6 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, guest host Mark Steyn said of the White House's accidental distribution of a phone-sex telephone number, "t seems to be the rest of the world getting nasty and we're the ones hanging upside down in the bondage dungeon being flogged and humiliated by the rest of the planet."

On the April 1 edition of Hannity, nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin said of "the Obama plan" for the economy, "I view it as economic child abuse. I've been calling it that for the longest time because our children are being compelled to work for generations that will be dead for money that's already spent. Their opportunities will be limited. Their liberty will be limited. And we're enslaving them to a future that our ancestors didn't create for us."

On the March 18 broadcast of The Lee Rodgers Program, Rodgers discussed "Obama's relationship with the Islamic world" and said, "I don't make any bones about it. I think the guy's out to sell us out. I really do."
On the March 10 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Lars Larson said of Obama, "A lot of us want him to fail in most of what he's asking the country to do because we view it as an existential threat."

Scarborough is not the only NBC-affiliated media figure to echo the gloom and doom rhetoric. On the March 23 edition of CNBC's Street Signs, anchor Erin Burnett said that a proposed tax on recipients of bonuses whose employers have received government bailouts "to some echo[es] the Russian and French Revolutions." She continued, "Here's a question: Is America starting to look like Venezuela?" And on the March 3 edition of NBC's Today, CNBC host Jim Cramer asserted that Obama has a "radical agenda" and declared that Obama's budget "basically put a level of fear in this country that I have not seen ever in my life." He later claimed that Obama's policies are "the most, greatest wealth destruction I've seen by a president."

Posted to the web on Friday, April 10, 2009 at 08:03 PM ET

 

[snuffbox]

What was that kind of stuff called from 9-12-01 to 1-19-09?

 

[BurningPirateShipSex]

Not-fascism?

 

[snuffbox]

Anybody who said anything like that about the Bush Jr Admin. was given a consistent label: Terrorist.

 

[bigolsmitty]

"We’ve so overused the word ‘socialism’ that it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago," [Saul Anuzis -- the former Michigan GOP chairman who recently joined Newt Gingrich's political machine] said. "Fascism — everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/us/politics/20caucus.html?_r=1

It's like the boy who cried wolf stepping up his game and crying, I dunno, bear.

 

[bigolsmitty]

Wyatt Cenac's visit to Sweden on the Daily Show was pretty funny. Tried to embed video but it wouldn't work right.

 

[Dr. Zaius]

"We’ve so overused the word ‘socialism’ that it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago," [Saul Anuzis -- the former Michigan GOP chairman who recently joined Newt Gingrich's political machine] said. "Fascism — everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/us/politics/20caucus.html?_r=1

It's like the boy who cried wolf stepping up his game and crying, I dunno, bear.

This.

 

[KOAB]

Haven't we had "Socialism" in this country for a while?