Well, he could ask the Crow or the Navajo…

… or at least that some Uighurs are jihadists! Imagine that! Some Muslims actually believe in violent jihad. Oh, but that’s modern China; they can’t believe in 7th century values. They must be libertarians fighting the state. Sure, that’s the picture.

Sometimes there are no good sides. Too bad Reagan didn’t understand that in Afghanistan. The last 8 years wouldn’t have happened and we could have avoided wars in two hell holes.

(#20) Thalience: Calling Obama “a socialist” is about as accurate as [stupid example] … Characterizing Obama as “a corporatist (with disturbing facist [sic] tendencies)” would be much closer to the truth.

Ownership means having the power to use your property as you see fit. If the government dictates what kinds of cars you will produce, what you will pay in salaries, what health care benefits you will offer, and redistributes stock value from investors to unions, please explain to me how that amounts to actual ownership.

If you paid for a car and had the title, then the mayor came along and told you when and where you could drive, whom you needed to transport (or even if you would be the driver), where you could buy gas, to whom you could sell it and for how much, would you still consider yourself to be the owner of the car?

So-called private ownership under fascist governments is a farce. It’s just another variation of socialism. And, arguments to the contrary always devolve into the dictionary citations. Like:

(#21) Les: Look folks, words have to mean something. A “socialist” is someone who believes (according to Merriam-Webster) in “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”

Socialism, communism, Marxism, social democrats, fascists, national socialists … they are all variations on the same collectivist core, and quibbling over dictionary definitions is an exercise in futility. Just ask yourself whether you’re free to work, buy, sell, and use as you think best (respecting the rights of others, of course). If the government says no, and the excuse is that the people, the fatherland, the motherland, the poor, the community, the herd, or the hive need the product of your efforts or creativity more than you do, then it doesn’t matter how it’s dressed up. Calling any of those socialism is accurate.

Taking over a car company and supporting single-payer health care … does not make one a “socialist.”

Wow, so “[t]aking over a car company” is not “collective or government ownership and administration of the means of production”? How do you figure?

The single-payer health care is a scam. You take choices out of the market. Then, you chip away at incentives to use non-government insurance. Companies must make a profit, while the government can run deep in the red. So the government can pay stupidly high prices for services and set the cost to the consumer at stupidly low prices. Non-government insurance can’t compete and whithers away.

Our paranoid movement has found a new enemy, so we don’t need the old one any more. The actual damage done by said enemy is irrelevant, all that matters is that they can be made to look very, very scary to a critical mass of US voters.

After the breakup of the soviet union, quieting of the cold war and finally 9/11 it’s much easier to demonize muslims than communists. “Look, WTC go Boom, Muslims bad” is a much simpler sell than requiring people to understand a modicum of economics and political theory.

But this is all Libertarianism 101, right?

Right?

I doubt it.

Better research would have shown you that the Uighurs (in Gitmo and China) favor a religious oppression. But I guess to some libertarians that’s just an alternative life-style.

Andrew however, is just a nut and we should all be relieved he is no longer employed by the federal government.

Cheer on the commies dude!

From a cold war veteran. You know, the one that really did involve weapons of mass destruction.

I think I’ll invest in the company that manufactures depends. Despite this economy you guys prove it’s a sure win.

http://benjamintheass.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-things-change.html

Fascist? That’d require quite a bit more rabid nationalism than Obama has exhibited. Hell, Obama can’t satisfy the wingnuts’ demands for more jingoistic chauvinism.

As for corporatism, I doubt he would have sought ownership stakes in companies under better economic circumstances, and some of the ownership stakes were established in the prior administration.

You would think that the words “state-controlled media” would be a…

Wait for it…

Red flag.

Shocking….shocking.

If the Uighur students are indeed “rampaging ‘with big knives stabbing people’ on the street,” that’s a regrettable form of protest. It’s amusing, though, to see a National Review contributor quote a communist country’s state-controlled media account of anti-government protests in order to make his point.

Well…a darker interpretation is that McCarthy views the State as the appropriate decision maker in all things and when people rise up and say no its always a bad thing. In other words, McCarthy is not a conservative but a Statist and Authoritarian. Wouldn’t be the first time a “conservative” slipped down the slope, so to speak.