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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Obama and Socialism

Here's a link to a rather thought provoking blog post I discovered a moment ago while randomly browsing through the blogs at Blogster.com. How valid is it? I don't know. But in light of Barack Obama's association with people such as Bill Ayers, I personally find it to be plausible.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Mark,

You shouldn't be so scared of Socialism. Governmental missmanagament, Racism and Fascism is a far bigger threat to Demochracy than Socialism. Exreme Fear of different Politial Philosophies and free thinkers can in fact bring the real Dictators into power. The American Government have always fed you with fear by constantly giving you new enemies to be afraid of, as Communists, Socialists, Muslims, antichrists symbols, coloured people, poor people etc, etc.. But in the same time they won't give the American people any medical security, no social security, bad education and allow people to buy guns and worst of all they kill people by having death penalties. CIA helped PInochet to kill President Allende who was demochratic elected Socialist in Chile. CIA trained and funded the Talibans in the Cold War until they had no use of them anymore. US put Saddam Hussein and Quadafi in power to control their contries with religious fear until USSR and Communism was not an enemy anymore, then US turned against the Muslims instead? And you my friend are scared of a little bit of Socialism? Communism surely went to far in USSR and the Fascists took over. Communism doesn't work on a large scale. But USA certainly need a better social security system to take better care of their own people and stop poverty and the enourmos gaps beetween Rich and poor and the Racism that outside America you only find in third world countries. The risk with a non-aggresive leader like Obama is that the American people get confused if they are not given the same dose of fear they are used to, which has so far made them feel special of being Americans and having an enemy to fight against. Love to humanity. Love to the future.

Mark Pettigrew said...

My blog post never said or implied that I was afraid of socialism. Yet you say that I'm afraid of Socialism. You assume too much. Opposition is not always motivated by fear.

You write, "Communism doesn't work on a large scale." That's a massive understatement, yet it misses the point. Efficacy (i.e., how well something "works") is not the sole measure of legitimacy. Some governments have been both efficient and evil. I like efficiency as much as the next person, but I'll take an inefficient government any day over an immoral, evil government. You’re right in saying that communism doesn’t work on a large scale, but even if it did, that wouldn’t mean that we ought to embrace it.

You seem to think that socialism is much better than fascism. Personally, I don't see much difference between the two, in terms of the way that both systems elevate fallible human beings to the level of gods while denying the authority or relevance of the real God who created the universe. One can believe that the foundation of good government consists of the theistic assumption that we will all be held accountable to God for the manner in which we have used or abused authority, without endorsing theocracy.

Communist Russia didn't "go too far". The Soviets merely carried their godless ideology to its logical conclusion. The difference between the ideology of Communism and the fundamentally similar ideology of modern American socialists is only an issue of quantity, not quality. A small dose of poison will kill more slowly than a heavy dose of the same. But it's still poison.

When one removes God from the equation, one ends up with a government built on quicksand, no matter how compassionate one's government might superficially seem to be. How do I know that Obama's government is built on such a foundation? Partly because he promotes the idea that unborn children and newborn infants are expendable and unworthy of legal protection. Collectively, Americans have allowed and defended the legal destruction (some might say murder) of more than 40 million unborn children since 1973. If Obama has his way, that destruction will continue indefinitely. In fact, judging by his record as an Illinois senator, Obama also endorses infanticide in some situations. That does frighten me, because I love this nation, and I fear that the moral deterioration of our nation will be its downfall. Legal abortion contradicts the fundamental values on which our nation was founded, inasmuch as it denies that all human beings are equally valuable. In that respect, legal abortion is remarkably analogous to the practice of slavery, which tainted our nation during the centuries prior to the Civil War. To oppose racism (as you do) while defending a practice which diminishes respect for another class of human beings (such as unborn children) is illogical and hypocritical.

You end your comment by writing, "Love to humanity. Love to the future." But a definition of "humanity" which excludes unborn children and newborn infants is one which flies in the face of both science and logic. On this planet, our children are our future. Therefore, an attack on our children, whether unborn or born, is an attack on our future, and on our nation. That ought to deeply concern us all, regardless of where we stand with regard to the merits (or lack thereof) of socialism.