ushanka.us: Not a Socialist - The Red Scare Returns!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Not a Socialist - The Red Scare Returns!

Frank Thomas, at the WSJ no less, is the latest to fail in his effort to paint Obama as the anti-socialist. His article: The Red Scare Returns.

He follows the same tired old script (yawn):

1) Do not acknowledge recent socialist actions by our Dear Leader,

2) Offer something as a definition of socialism, ie. a line that has not been crossed so therefore he's not a socialist, and

3) Mock and mis-represent those of us - and our numbers are growing - that label our Dear Leader a socialist with the intent to silence our voices or distract from our compelling arguments.

We'll use the three items above as the outline of our retort:

1) Ignoring Recent Events:

There is no mention of GM, Chrysler, forced TARP money to banks, or any other recent event in his article. What journalism school teaches its students to make a case against something by ignoring the thing you're making a case against? (rhetorical)

We'll quote from the far more moderate analyst, Rush Limbaugh, on these events - his Morning Update for tomorrow:

The federal government has taken over America's mortgage industry – 90 percent of all home loans are under government control. Our largest automakers are under government control, as are large swaths of our financial sector. The entire free-market energy sector is waiting for the axe to fall – via "cap-and-trade" regulations, which will effectively nationalize them. Unaccountable, unelected government czars now set policy – in an executive branch that is unrestrained by Constitutional checks and balances. Intelligence officers who, under a previous administration, served our country in a time of national peril – are now subject to political trials, by an out-of-control Justice Department.

Let the record show, we were calling Obama, and the Dems, socialists when it wasn't popular. We also use the words Marxist, Statist, and Communist. These labels may lower the political discourse, but it is becoming apparent that the days are numbered for our right to do so if Obama's agenda is not stopped.

2) Socialism Il-Defined

Thomas Franks says the Red Scare is only legitimate if the following occurs:

No Huey Long materialized to haunt the wealthy and we have endured no wave of sit-down strikes.

Nope. It isn't Huey Long that is doing the haunting. Many of those wealthy, and not so wealthy, have lost 40-50% of their wealth in the past year. Some of them lost it when the government told them to take 10 cents on the dollar as Chrysler bond holders.

It appears Franks has caught that nasty swine envy bug going around - in comments about Atlas Shrugged (in our library at the left):

The book's sales skyrocketed in early 2009, proving that when bankers puff asset bubbles and wreck the world, a large part of the public can be counted on to learn from that experience that bankers are the real victims of society, presumably deserving even more tax cuts and deregulation.

Shall we assume Thomas trusts his money with someone other than a banker?

3) Demonize Us

Today, from the floor of town-hall meetings and the heights of the Republican Party, alarmed Americans fret about secret socialists and denounce the president as a dictator. They make plans to pull their children out of school rather than have them exposed to his hypnotic oratorical powers. They quail at imaginary death panels, storm at imaginary threats to gun rights, and froth at an imaginary birth-certificate scandal. And it has required only eight months of Democratic administration to bring the right to a boil.
---
So it doesn't really matter that there isn't much of a proper, visible, '30s-style left in America. One Van Jones is all it takes to negate the Obama administration's cautious centrism. The radicalism is just under the surface, if you're willing to believe.

And it's this willingness to believe, with its escalating cries of "socialism" and "indoctrination" that intrigues me most. Can people really be moved to worry about communism with the Soviet Union gone? Can you really hope to gin up a red scare without almost no reds?
---
...where else is a suspicious mind to go when there are no other explanations being offered?
---
And so we all dare to call it treason. Calling it treason is a movie in which we can all have a role.

So we're all 'birthers'. And traitors. (yawn)

As for his comment: "Obama administration's cautious centrism", we blame the public schools.

Our suggestions for Mr. Frank:

1) Get ten minutes with colleague Bret Stephens and discuss that thought that communism isn't a threat because there isn't a Soviet Union,

2) Assuming you are in the NY office, look out the window tomorrow at that pit across the street and ask yourself if anyone discounted the radical muslim threat before 9/11 in the same manner you discounted the socialism threat with your intellectually lazy Huey Long line,

3) Consider a different old-media outlet that is more in tune with your enlightened ways of thinking. The New York Times will be the same commute, and

4) Buy one of our Commie Obama Rally Caps. Winter is coming!

Labels: Not a Socialist

posted by Karl @ 7:46 PM Permalink 0 comments Post a comment

0 Comments:

Get The Hat!

Connect

- Add as Friend

YouTube

- YouTube

- RSS

Email - Ushanka.us@gmail.com

About

Recent Posts

Blog Home

Thursday Night Cigar

ACORN

ACORN Caught on Undercover Video.

Correction: Commie Liar

Guns: Art and News

Van Jones Out

Is Anyone Watching the Store at the Federal Reserv...

Not a Socialist - Another Dupe!

Communism: An Education

Karl's Weekend Reading

Labels

Communists
  Russia
  China
  Venezuela
  N. Korea
  Cuba
  DNC
  MSM

Loss of Freedom
  Slippery Slope
  Gun Rights
  Taxes
  Education
  Health Care
  Food
  Crisis as a Means

Cartoons
  White Flag
  Hammer & Sickle

Other
  Not a Socialist
  Losing a War
  Ushanka
  Ushanka Babe

  Videos
  Articles & Lists

Campaigns

2008
  Commie Obama
  Convention Reports
  Headline Analysis

2010
  Commie Obama
  Headline Analysis

Current
  Obama To-Do List

Library

Reagan’s War
Peter Schweizer

While Europe Slept
Bruce Bawer

Arrogance
Bernard Goldberg

Carnage and Culture
Victor Davis Hanson

Animal Farm
George Orwell

The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister
John O'Sullivan

Reagan: In His Own Hand

Red Horizons
Ion Mihai Pacepa

The Black Book of Communism

Communism: A History
Richard Pipes

The Venona Secrets
Herbert Romerstein

The Case For Democracy
Natan Sharansky

Programmed to Kill
Ion Mihai Pacepa

Liberal Fascism
Jonah Goldberg

No Simple Victory
Norman Davies

The Crusader
Paul Kengor

Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand

Ivan Denisovich
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Great Terror
Robert Conquest

Tears of My Soul
Sokreaksa S. Himm

The Gulag Archipelago
Alexandr Solzestein

Kolyma
Robert Conquest

In The First Circle
Alexandr Solzestein

The Forsaken
Tim Tzouliadis

Stalin: Breaker of Nations
Robert Conquest
Karl's Notes

Shakedown Socialism
Oleg Atbashian

Kronstadt, 1921
Paul Avrich
Karl's Notes

Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler
Robert Gellately

Gulag Archipelago Vol II
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Karl's Notes

None Dare Call It Treason
John A. Stormer

Trotsky
David Renton
Karl's Notes

Decision for Disaster
Grayston L. Lynch

Warning to the West
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia
Oliver H. Radkey
Karl's Notes

Anthem
Ayn Rand

The Aquariums of Pyongyang
Kang Chol-Wwan

Cinema

The Truth about Communism

Window to Paris

Goodbye Lenin

The Lives of Others

Dr. Zhivago

Reds

The Company

To Live

Baader Meinhof Complex

Katyn

Agenda

Moscow on the Hudson

Archangel

As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me

First Circle

We Are the Living

Russia's War

The Tunnel

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

The Way I Spent the End of the World

Escape from North Korea

Yodok Stories

Humidor

RP Sun Grown

RP Edge

CAO Brazilia

Santa Damiana

Camacho SLR