Comrade Obama

Obama's supporters address charges he holds Socialist views, not by denying that fact, but by saying the income tax has always been progressive, and besides, the government already has programs to reistribute wealth. However, as Pat Buchanan has pointed out,

"...there is a difference not just of degree but of kind between unemployment compensation for jobless workers, welfare for destitute families, and confiscating the income of taxpayers who earned it -- to hand out to chronic tax consumers who did not.

This last is the socialism Winston Churchill called "the philosophy of envy and gospel of greed." And it is this suggestion of socialist ideology in Obama's words that has produced the belated pause by a nation that seemed to be moving into his camp. What did Barack say in 2001?

He spoke of the inadequacy of the courts as institutions to bring about "redistributive change" in society, of the "tragedy" of the civil rights movement in losing sight of the "political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change."

Normal people don't talk like that. Socialists do.

This is ideology speaking. This is the redistributionist drivel one hears from cosseted college radicals and the "Marxist professors" Obama says in his memoir he sought out at the university. It is the language of social parasites like William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Father Pfleger.

Enforced egalitarianism entails the death of excellence. For it seizes the rewards that excellence earns and turns them over to politicians and bureaucrats for distribution to the mediocrities upon whose votes they depend. One need not be Ayn Rand to see that Barack has picked up from past associates utopian notions that have ever produced nightmare states.

Obama has denounced Ayers actions as a domestic terrorist, but he has never denounced Ayers goals. In fact, he has funded and promoted them. That, at least, is a matter of public record.

One more thing. Last night I saw Obama shrugging off the "Socialist" tag with a joke, saying that the opposition had discovered that as a child he shared his toys, and once gave a classmate half of his sandwich. Hey Obama - sharing voluntarily is a fine and noble thing. Using the power of the state to confisticate wealth and distribute it as you see fit is another matter entirely.