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David McElroy

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France’s new Socialist president wants same things Obama does

By David McElroy · May 8, 2012

Nobody is entirely sure what a socialist is anymore. Some people are convinced that Barack Obama is a socialist. Two years ago, Newsweek argued that both sides of the mainstream are basically big-government socialists now. And now we have a new French president from the Socialist party. So what do real socialists want?

It turns out that real socialists want pretty much the same thing as Obama and the Democrats do — more government spending, higher taxes on “the rich” and an end to planned budget cuts. Newly elected French President François Hollande says he will end “austerity” in the country, which basically means he’s going to take as much money as he can from productive people and spend like there’s no tomorrow.

Government spending in European countries has been so bad that the idea of reducing spending to at least start trimming deficits is called austerity. Just as is the case here, the people who want the spending to continue say that “the rich” have the responsibility to pay more — because people who are now being supported by government would have to support themselves otherwise.

The standard rhetoric in this country is to claim that those who want to balance the budget want to “balance the budget on the backs of the poor,” but the idea is the same. The idea is that those who are already being supported by productive people deserve to continue to get that support — and it’s “greedy” for “the rich” not to want to work hard and have their money confiscated to be given to other people.

A lot of people see socialism and fascism as polar opposites. They say that socialism is extreme left-wing thinking and fascism is extreme right-wing thinking. Even though the groups hate each other, I say they’re first cousins. They both want the same things. They just differ in how to go about it.

Obama isn’t a socialist. Not really. I’d say his programs are more fascist. The socialists like direct government ownership of companies, but the fascists like to simply control privately owned businesses so much that they’re required to do the government’s bidding. Nobody opposes Obama’s health care takeover any more than Ron Paul, and Paul effectively makes the point that the plan is fascist, not socialist.

But what do the labels really matter these days? What matters are the ideas and where those ideas lead. The ideas that Obama favors — and that the new French Socialist president favors — involve massive additional spending and higher taxes. You can call it whatever you want. Socialism lite? Fascism with hope and change? Whatever. The bottom line is that both sides of the mainstream favor essentially the same things. They only differ on how far to go.

The Republicans are in the process of wrapping up their nominating process, which is going to make Mitt Romney their candidate. (I’m sorry, Ron Paul supporters. The race is over. Seriously. You’re wasting your time.) And Romney is virtually indistinguishable from Obama on the major issues. Even the program considered the worst of Obama’s alleged socialism — what’s come to be called ObamaCare — was directly modeled on RomneyCare in Massachusetts. (RomneyCare was even more sweeping and oppressive.)

Whatever you want to call them, they’re all socialists now — all across the points of the political mainstream. They’re going to argue over relatively minor differences, but they’re unwilling to consider anything outside of that very narrow band of acceptable belief.

I obviously don’t agree with leftist linguist Noam Chomsky about much, but he showed great insight on this point when he said, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

That’s where we are today. The two sides of the mainstream in this country aren’t that different on economics — at least when compared to ideas based in actual freedom. The two sides might argue about exactly how much is acceptable to steal from people, but they’re united in the firm belief that the theft is legitimate and necessary.

Incoming French President François Hollande calls himself a socialist. Barack Obama doesn’t, but he favors pretty much identical economic programs. His GOP opponents have spent the past four or five years pursuing variants of the same Keynesian nonsense, but with different rhetoric. When it comes down to it, how are they any better than the folks in France who admit they’re socialists?

The chorus we’re starting to hear from political pundits is that “austerity doesn’t work” and that Republicans have to learn from the lesson of the French voter backlash in favor of the Socialists. They say that because they want government to keep growing. They want it to tax and spend and borrow. So they’re going to warn Republicans that doing anything else “doesn’t work.”

They’re right about one thing. It’s ultimately not going to work with voters to tell them the truth about what has to happen. If anyone tells voters the truth — that spending has to be slashed, even spending that voters like — that person or party is going to lose. Voters are not willing to hear the hard truth that they can’t live forever at someone else’s expense.

We’re all socialists now. It’s not literally true — and it’s not true of very many people who will be reading here — but it’s close enough to the truth about the American mainstream. They argue about how far to take it, but all of the people who have any hope of really holding power are dedicated to continuing the same failed policies that got us here.

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I just caught the very end of sunset, but I loved I just caught the very end of sunset, but I loved how the fading colors looked behind the evening clouds. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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