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.
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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?
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...where else is a suspicious mind to go when there are no other explanations being offered?
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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!