Allen West: I've 'Heard' 80 House Democrats Are Communist Party Members
After reading the story I realized that I needed to help out my conservative friends. You see many conservatives today are making themselves look ridiculously silly, if not utterly stupid, with their repeated mis-use of words like "socialist" and "communism". You see these words are commonly used by conservatives to describe individuals or organizations or countries that don't fit the definition of the words. Conservatives seem to think that these words mean something bad but they seem to have no idea what these words mean. So, I am writing this a service to my conservative friends so they can avoid looking like idiots and realize that they need to find new words to attack us liberals.
From Webster's dictionary;
so·cial·ism, noun
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
com·mu·nism, noun
1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property
b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
2 capitalized a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production
c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably
Since we now know the definitions of these words we can begin to use them correctly. First off Barack Obama is not a socialist or a communist. If he was a communist he would be for the total elimination of private property and would be working towards achieving that goal. Of course he has done nothing of the sort and he himself is a fairly wealthy individual who has shown no interest in giving up his personal fortune. So is he a socialist? No, not a socialist either. You see he is not interested in having the US government take over private businesses so they will be owned AND run by the government. What about the auto company bailouts? Well here is the thing, the government didn't buy Chrysler and GM and the government did not take over the operation of either of those companies. What it did was bailout the companies and take partial ownership of the companies in exchange for the bailout so it could hold the companies accountable. In June of 2011 the government got rid of the last small portion of Chrysler that it owned and has been consistently reducing the number of shares it owns at GM, something a socialist would never do. Furthermore the government was always divorced from the day to day operations of both of these companies, something that would fly in the face of socialist ideology. Therefore, Obama can not be a socialist as he had the perfect chance to be a socialist and turned it down.
We also need to look at a few other things the government does that are considered to be "communist" or "socialist" by conservatives. Medicare, food stamps, social security. These are all "social programs" and they are called social programs because they benefit our society. They are not socialist programs however because they don't involve the government owning AND controlling the means of production for any industry.
Countries like France and Germany do have some socialist aspects to their governments. Germany is part owner of Volkswagen and they do have some control over the day to day operations of the company. That is what socialism looks like, specifically it looks like one of the largest and most successful automobile manufacturers in the world. So as you can see, socialism doesn't always fail.
I hope you will be able to use this information to correct your mis-use of words like socialist and communist. I will also take this chance to tell my liberal friends that they probably need to eliminate words like "fascist" from their political discourse vocabulary. After all, we don't want to look as stupid as the conservatives do.
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