Socialist or worse?

Jay Ambrose:

Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Republican, recently joined commentators Rush Limbaugh, Patrick Buchanan and others in using the word "socialist" to describe President Obama and his policies, and we all know what's coming - a verbal bombardment.

Critics will call him hysterical, paranoid and stupid. They will say he is a scaremonger misusing the language for political effect. Instead of looking at where Mr. Obama's policies are taking us, we'll have another fight over the meaning of a word and its connotations.

So fine. Let's drop the S-word and simply agree that Mr. Obama's policies call for a vastly enlarged welfare state, an extraordinarily more powerful and interventionist federal government exercising ever-greater control over business firms and the economy, further redistribution of income and fewer freedoms for all.

Obviously, our current chief of state did not invent this federal intrusiveness that the Founders explicitly tried to inhibit. From very early on, there were dribs and drabs of statist ambition, though it was not until President Franklin D. Roosevelt that we had the deluge - the New Deal - much of which is still with us.

...

The question is whether the Obama agenda could take all of this to something like the still more overweening governmental invasiveness that much of Europe is now trying to escape, something that becomes a change in kind instead of just a change in degree, and the answer is: Look at what's happening.

Mr. Obama has already undone Mr. Clinton's welfare reform. The stimulus bill is a heaping helping of deficit deathliness with few compensatory benefits. The government now represents the largest percentage of the economy since World War II. The oppressively dictatorial House health bill would expand costs when the only salvation is to contain them. The government is the boss of financial institutions and much of the auto industry, massive new regulation is looming, and there is constant talk of reshaping the economy. Proposals to lessen global warming would further tax and control overtaxed businesses to restrict energy vital to economic growth with little hope of affecting climate more than an insignificant bit.

If you don't want to call all of this and much more socialism, don't. But it would assuredly give us a new kind of America that diminishes much that has been precious.

Socialism is where the state owns the means of production. With the exception of GM and Chrysler that is not the case. But Obama policies are actually worse than socialism. His control freak agenda is dictating salaries and other policy considerations without the responsibility of ownership. He is exercising control without ownership of the results of his policies.

I don't think it is socialism, but I do think his policies are worse than socialism. Socialism is evil, and these polices are having the same effect.