{"id":9947,"date":"2012-02-13T12:21:38","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T12:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/13\/on-calling-obama-a-socialist-2\/"},"modified":"2012-02-13T12:21:38","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T12:21:38","slug":"on-calling-obama-a-socialist-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/13\/on-calling-obama-a-socialist-2\/","title":{"rendered":"On Calling Obama a Socialist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">It is a tactical mistake for libertarians and conservatives to label Obama a socialist. For what will happen, has happened: liberals will revert to a strict definition and point out that Obama is not a socialist by this definition. Robert Heilbroner <a href=\"http:\/\/www.econlib.org\/library\/Enc\/Socialism.html\" target=\"_self\">defines<\/a> socialism in terms of &quot;a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production.&quot; To my knowledge, Obama has never advocated such a thing. So when the libertarian or conservative accuses Obama of socialism he lets himself in for a fruitless and wholly unnecessary verbal dispute from which he will emerge the loser.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">It is enough to point out that the policies of Obama and the Democrat Party lead us toward bigger government and away from self-reliance, individual responsibility, individual liberty, and sound fiscal policy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">It is even worse to label him a &#39;communist.&#39; Every communist is a socialist, but not every socialist is a communist. If our president is not a socialist, then <em>a fortiori<\/em> he is not a communist. It is intellectually irresponsible to take a word that has a definite meaning and turn it into a semantic bludgeon. That&#39;s the sort of thing we expect from leftists, as witness their favorite &#39;F&#39; word, &#39;fascist,&#39; a word they apply as indiscriminately and irresponsibly as &#39;racist.&#39;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a tactical mistake for libertarians and conservatives to label Obama a socialist. For what will happen, has happened: liberals will revert to a strict definition and point out that Obama is not a socialist by this definition. Robert Heilbroner defines socialism in terms of &quot;a centrally planned economy in which the government controls &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/13\/on-calling-obama-a-socialist-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On Calling Obama a Socialist&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}