Yesterday, in response to a comment, you added: You are correct about the cabinet.

It is the 3,000 other jobs the president gets to fill that will trouble us. That’s where if there is any radicalism in him, we will see it manifested in how he fills out the bureaucracy.

I wonder what you think of this piece by someone that evidently agrees with your first point and whether you might temper your fear of the coming admnistration’s appointments.

The point being that it is quite easy to find appointees doing bad, stupid and wrong things or pursuing policies that you don’t support. The more interesting question is how are these appointees managed by the executive when they become manifestly unfit for the office which they hold.

“Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society.”

“Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and creates an unequal society. All socialists advocate the creation of an egalitarian society, in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.”

Reading the entire article, it seems inescapable that Obama, the New Left, or even the Newer Left is just a matter of best to implement socialism. Reality is the West practices a form of Social Democracy as defined in the cited article.

The US, in fact, practices socialism through Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, taxation and other forms of “targeted” redistribution programs (such as Pell grants). There are few non-socialist US politicians: Bush, McCain, Kerry, Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are all socialists. Libertarians, for example, may fit into but they are a splinter off a splinter off a twig as far as impact.

Thus, the real issue should be towhat extent McCain or Obama will drag the nation toward communism?

It should be obvious each candidate would implement a dramatic move toward communism. After all is said and done about who will tax the least/most and expand welfare the least/most, each favor some form of AGW laws. McCain favors cap-and-trade from his sponsorship of bills in the Senate. Like all other things about Obama, no one really knows but whatever it is one must presume he would favor something no less heinous than McCain.

The fact that few seem to understand or even care how socialized just shows how far the mythical “center” has moved.

I strongly disagree about trying to distinguish Obama as a socialist since both parties practice socialism. One should just skip to the end and decide which form of socialism works for you - McCain’s version or Obama’s version. Clearly, Obama’s version would grease the skids more than McCain, but both are carrying buckets of grease.

I keep hearing this again and again - Michael, we could very easily turn back the question and ask why do you brush away his associations with Wright, Ayers et al as merely poltical ?

What exactly gives you the confidence about a person who has now been exposed twice in the last 2 weeks calling for “redistributive” justice and “spreading the wealth” around ?

Saying that Buffet,Volcker support Obama does not mean a thing when you cannot refute the fact that he believes in socialist redistribution - it does not mean anything if he is going to sign card check into law - increasing the power of unions and creating more problems between management and labor.

Support of these men does not mean a thing when he is retarded enough to increase capital gains taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes.. and that too in this economy. After all some one needs to pay up for those middle class handouts already on top of the reduction in tax rates Bush implemented.

If any one thinks that the worst will be over when the Bush admn is out of office, you aint seen nothing yet.

The Jacksonian Democratic Party destroyed the banks so they could keep the wealth more equitably distributed among the small farmers and workers (whites). And Jackson and Polk furthered the territorial expansionism under the rubric of providing the common man a piece of land.

Radical Republicans hoped to remake Southern society after the Civil War by putting the “bottom rail on top” and introducing an egalitarian sort of yeomanry in the old plantation belt.

The Populists fought against concentration of wealth in the hands of Eastern industrialists and bankers.

Progressives, like John McCain’s hero Teddy Roosevelt, radically expanded the scope of government to regulate governmental excess and put the economy on the sides of the “people.” The crowning achievement of the Progressive Era - the Food and Drug Act and the 17th Amendment allowing the Income Tax - introduced Federal regulation and progressive taxation into American life. To call that socialism is to ignore 100 years of history.

We all know about the New Deal and the Great Society.

The point here is that redistributionist economic policy is as old as America itself. There has always been a counter-argument, obviously. But it is hardly alien or unprecedented.

Barack Obama will, undoubtedly, move the country to the left. Yes, some of his ideas draw from the New Left of the 1960s. But that just may be where the political winds are blowing now after 28 years of the Reagan Revolution. It’s cyclical.

If only Sen. Obama would be as candid about his embrace of socialism and Marxism. I have been in some of the same legal and educational circles as he, and these philosophies are not considered outside the mainstream at all there. Unfortunately, Americans who embrace economic and personal liberty and who largely don’t share these views will discover, all too late, they have elected a man who is anathema both to them and to a democratic republic. With a dumbed down electorate and socialist-leaning and largely ignorant media, McCain never really had a chance. Yet even the ignorant sheep who will flock to Obama probably wouldn’t go there if they realized what he envisions for the future. He won’t tell them, the media won’t tell them, and they are basically too illiterate to discover for themselves they are about to elect a latte-sipping communist.

Social justice like Lenin and Stalin wanted to bring to the Russian people.

Social justice like Mussolini wanted to bring to the Italian people.

Social justice like Hitler wanted to bring to the German people.

Social justice like Mao wanted to bring to the Chinese people.

Etc, etc, etc.

Do you think that incipient despots admit to themselves that it’s the power that’s the lure? The social justice is just the marketing spin.

The rest of the audience, and Rick’s misguided part, are just plain wrong. The past eight years of ‘conservative’ government have been a disaster. The previous six with Gingrich leading the House was nearly as much a disaster. And Reagan’s time was filled with mistakes, errors, and generally lazy work. It seems to me that the Conservative/Republican movement/party has little to be proud of. We are deeper in debt, engaged in pointless war, at odds with the world, and home to a vastly over wealthy financial elite that appears to care little for trickling anything down to anyone. How is this American? Are we to stand on cold street corners watching out wealth go by in limosines as peasants used to watch the king? Too many want to cling to a wealth they likely do not have but dream of and too few remember that ‘the poor are always with us’–no economy has figured out a way to bring the poor along. And this is not to their credit. Why claim that being unfair is the right thing to do? I am astounded at the fundamental heartlessness of the position.