Obama is a self-declared Marxist - addended (23jul12 update)

George Rebane

Since Obama opened his mouth during his 2008 candidacy, RR has maintained that the man is a Marxist.  There is little surprise in that conclusion when we consider his grandparents, parents, school years, Chicago brethren, his own words, and deeds as President.  But last Friday in Roanoke, VA he dispelled all residual doubt in a speech that laid it all out.

There Obama channeled one of his own fellow travelers and former administration officials, Elizabeth Warren, who is now running for the Senate in Massachusetts.  Communism’s Marxist basis admits no individual merit from individual enterprise.  All success in pre-collective social orders is suspect, and attributed to the successful having become so on the backs of the oppressed people.  The Marxists' constant theme is that government, as the organizer of the collective, makes every success possible, as opposed to the vision, tolerance for risk, hard work, and entrepreneurial spirit of those who start and build businesses.

To the communist, businesses are rogue enterprises in society that must be absorbed into the collective as quickly as possible, and those that started and operated such businesses must be exposed for the pariahs they are and punished.  We can see it all coming together in what Obama is now getting ready to loosen on the nation during his second term.  From Obama’s speech last Friday –

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. … If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.  (emphasis added, full text here, and a related comment below)

This is Lenin in the months before the Bolshevik revolution in 1918.  Both leaders maintain it is classes of people, marshaled by a correct government, that are the engines of wealth creation.  The enterprising individuals are the thieves and blood-suckers who claim the lion’s share of what they didn’t create and what never belonged to them.

WSJ’s Daniel Henninger recently wrote about Obama's newly revealing economics –

There is no theory anywhere in non-Marxist economics that says growth's primary engine is a social class. A middle class is the result of growth, not its cause. Barack Obama not only believes in class-based growth but has built his whole growth strategy around it. … One word appears nowhere in the 53-minute Obama speech on economic growth: "capital." Human, financial, whatever. Capital dare not speak its name. … Most revealing is that the phrases "my plan" and "I have a plan" appear 13 times. A central role for planning often appears in emerging, underdeveloped economies, not in an advanced economy like ours in which the discovery and diffusion of productive new ideas is spontaneous, rapid and unpredictable.

In The Road to Serfdom nobelist F.A. Hayek wrote of where such central planning has taken us in the past, and where it will take us in the future.  (You can order an abridged version of this classic from the Heritage Foundation.)

But you may say that Obama is just one machine politician with no understanding of or experience in the private sector.  However, what gives this Marxist his power is the 'dumbth' that pervades the land.  Half of the electorate have no resources with which to critique his ideology, and see such statements as benign and possessing of a certain logic - the bitter fruits of a progressive public education.

[Re The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.  Bullcrap!

The Internet was developed primarily through the work of multiple universities, private contractors, and government agencies here and overseas.  What we call the Internet first came together as the ARPANET that was developed with DARPA funding to set up a rapid communication network among scientists and engineers working in academe, government, and private industry.  The first ARPANET link was established between UCLA and Stanford Research Institute on 29 October 1969.  Government had neither clue nor intent to commercialize any of this technology.

The Internet was effectively commercialized with advent of the Worldwide Web (WWW) in the mid-1990s, again through the mostly happenstance multi-national development efforts of academe, government agencies, and private enterprises.  The WWW that we daily use resides on the Internet as a service based on such software innovations as hypertext protocols and the ubiquotous browser first developed at the University of Illinois.  The successful commercialization of the Internet has been brought about by private enterprise, and has happened because of governments' absence, a 'shortcoming' which the Left has been trying to rectify ever since with various degrees of 'success'.]

[Addendum] H/T to RR reader.

[23jul12 update]  Gordon Crovitz writing in 23jul12 WSJ has a more detailed report on the development of the Internet - 'Who Really Invented the Internet?'.

Comments

[Douglas Keachie]

To be true to the Constitution and the Second Amendment, how about we insist that all firearms, to be legal, must be of that vintage, or at least replicas? The Constitution may have been perfect back then. How many Founding Fathers would support hiding behind the Amendment with the resultant carnage's we've seen? Next time you open your wallet and see Jefferson, Jackson, or Franklin, try telling them you are doing it (taking this stance, NRA recoomended) for the good of your country, and then listen to what they'd have to say. "YAI" which is the initials for the phrase, maybe you can do better than with L.W., they both suit you well.

[Ben Emery]

I support the rights of the second amendment but just as the first amendment has limits so does the second. Automatic/ semi-automatic weapons should not be sold to ordinary citizens. Possibly firing ranges can rent them out for target practice but other than that these are military grade fire arms. I feel the same way about SAM's and those things that could do huge amounts of damage with very little effort.

I know I know, we need to arm ourselves with at least the same grade of police and military fire arms to fight off the repressive government.

Some reasonable common sense approaches to prevent gun violence. http://www.bradycampaign.org/
There might be some things I don't fully support but I am not an expert on the Brady Campaign. What I do know from working side by side with Amanda Wilcox in the shared booth space of the Nevada County Peace Center and the Brady Campaign is what she talked about with visitors to the booth and it all seemed very logical, legal, and common sense.

http://www.bradycampaign.org/

[Gregory]

Keach, you're the one intent on ignoring the meaning of the words you use.

There is no "problem with stockpiling", and I expect theatres and their liability insurers to figure out for themselves what they need to do, if anything, about their emergency exits. Somehow, I don't think that will include armored spotlights.

Regarding "the forest for the trees", there are 300+ million people in the US and nearly as many guns. To date, in our history, there has been one and only one mass shooting of the magnitude of the one in Colorado. Reacting to this by dreaming up a plethora of laws and pretending it might keep it from happening again in the next 234 years is just politics as usual.

The USA has over 100 times the firearms per capita of Japan, yet their violent death rate, suicides plus homicides, has historically been higher than ours. If death is desired, there is a way.

[Paul Emery]

Gregory
"The USA has over 100 times the firearms per capita of Japan, yet their violent death rate, suicides plus homicides, has historically been higher than ours. If death is desired, there is a way."

Where do you get your figures on Japan gun deaths?

This is what I found. Japan is almost the lowest on the list.

"The United States leads the world's richest nations in gun deaths -- murders, suicides, and accidental deaths due to guns - according to a study published April 17, 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The U.S. was first at 14.24 gun deaths per 100,000 people. Two other countries in the Americas came next. Brazil was second with 12.95, followed by Mexico with 12.69.

Japan had the lowest rate, at 0.05 gun deaths per 100,000 (1 per 2 million people).

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=6166

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

[Gregory]

Paul, first, the nutcase du jour did not have an "automatic rifle", and to my knowledge, none of the 300,000 or so automatic weapons legally owned by civilians in the US have ever found to have been used in a crime.

The first line of defence against nutcases is friends, family, schools and workplaces who know the nutcases in question. If I recall correctly, one local nutcase who shot a few folks even had a close relative in law enforcement who knew he was having mental problems and owned guns.

Second, I made no claim about Japan's firearms deaths, only their violent deaths by any intentional means, perhaps I wasn't clear enough. The point was and is that, when people want to kill, they will figure out how. In Japan they even have sword controls, but that doesn't stop people from jumping off buildings and bridges, or wandering into the surf carrying their children.

Japan's suicide rate plus murder rate has historically been higher than ours, and I'm not sure I'd prefer living in a society that places such a burden on their people as to drive them to kill themselves at such a rate. The US murder rate is 4.7 per 100000 per year, while men in Japan kill themselves at a rate of 40 per year per 100000. In short, it isn't the guns.

[Gregory]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Make the guns go away, the folks who want to kill themselves or others will remain.

[Ben Emery]

Here is the statistics on Japan's violent deaths.
http://violentdeathproject.com/countries/japan

[Gregory]

Ben, the "Brady Center" has about 28 thousand members and a budget of $4 million. The NRA (I'm not a member, too Republican for me) has 4 million members and a budget that dwarfs the former Handgun Control, Inc.

Sorry, but semi-automatic rifles and pistols have been in civilian hands for the ~120 years they've been around. In fact, the iconic Colt Model 1911 had it's 100 year anniversary last year and is still being made in large numbers by several companies.

[Paul Emery]

So Gregory thanks for confirming that Japans intentional homicide rate is the lowest in the world. Perhaps all that gun control does have an effect
Your link s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

[Gregory]

Paul, Japan's overall suicide rate is something like five times our murder rate. Perhaps all that gun control doesn't have an effect.

Japan has fewer murders because they have fewer people who want to murderer. I can't find a current citation, but I have seen a credible claim that Japanese nationals who move to the US have an even lower murder rate than the population they leave behind, despite having access to guns.

[Ben Emery]

Greg,
How regulation works against banks screwing people over.

http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=US3604990420120720

"Capital One is not quite "No Hassle" according to federal charges that the credit card company violated consumer protection requirements.

Capital One will pay $210 million to settle charges raised by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The majority of that money will go to consumers but $60 million will be paid out in fines."

[Paul Emery]

So Gregory aside from family counseling and taging suspicious friends as possible psycho terrorists do you have any other ideas to stop this epidemic?

[Gregory]

Paul E, to partially answer your own question, you might want to earn those extra credit points and identify the state university that agonised over whether or not an incoming student should be allowed to choose whether their roomie would be keeping a handgun in the room, and describe the carnage that resulted.

[Michael Anderson]

YAI = Yachting Association of India?

[Gregory]

Mike... was that supposed to be meaningful? Perhaps meant for a different blog?

[TomKenworth]

Of course in the USA we may not count single car accidents while drunk as violent self inflicted deaths:

In 2006, there were 16,005 drunk driving deaths (.01% of our population) in the U.S. There are eight drunk driving fatalities involving teens every day. Driving while intoxicated is extremely dangerous. It can be lethal. Something must be done to stem the tide of drunk driving deaths. We sometime do suicide differently.

YAI = Yippee Avionics International?

[TomKenworth]

Perhaps suicide is much more a part of their culture, and murder is much more a part of ours. In any event, requiring the return of spent shell casings to purchase one more than two boxes of ammo at a time, would slow down the stockpiling process, and requires no restrictions on guns bought, or types of gun bought. Bring back the spent shell casings from two boxes, and you get to buy four boxes, bring back the spent shell casings from four boxes, and you get to buy five boxes, and so on. It would mean numerous trips to the range using ever increasing amounts of ammo to ever get to 6,000 rounds. I'm sure you can write the iterations needed and figure it out in a hurry. In any event it would make such an individual fairly conspicuous on a range, after they got to the 1,000 rounds per session, point.

At 50 rounds of .38 per box, that would be twenty boxes back to the store to get to box 21, and that would be only 1,000 rounds, 50 x 20. To reach 3,000, how many rounds would our psycho have already had to have purchased, and then shot, and then returned to the store for? Is that calc too difficult for you? Stores could easily weigh the casings, by pulling out 10 at random, weighing them, and then weighing the whole pile, and doing the math. Be a good boy and write, Psychos, Terrorists, and Mathematics, filled with similar story problems, and a teachers guide. I'm sure it would sell.

[TomKenworth]

"One and only one of the magnitude of the one in Aurora Colorado"

So the other 27 since Columbine are inconsequential, as is the accelerating rate of incidents?

http://www.newsmax.com/US/mass-shootings-us-colorado/2012/07/20/id/445971

Try telling that to the parents and families of the victims of any of the other 27, what a display of character, I'll let the other readers decide just what kind of character.

BTW, More we killed, fewer were injured over all, in other incidents, so Greg's magical magnitude scale is weighted in favor of wounding, not kills. Odd?

[TomKenworth]

should have been "more WERE killed," not "we."

[TomKenworth]

Do you suppose corporate America would ever consider the Amish response?

On October 2, 2006, a shooting occurred at the West Nickel Mines School, an Amish one-room schoolhouse in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines, a village in Bart Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.[1][2][3] Gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV took hostages and shot ten girls (aged 6–13), killing five, before committing suicide in the schoolhouse.[1][2][3][4] The emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation in the response of the Amish community was widely discussed in the national media. The West Nickel Mines School was torn down, and a new one-room schoolhouse, the New Hope School, was built at another location.

Not a chance!

[TomKenworth]

And before Greg gets to go whoopido over the .01% above, I caught it, and forced the spreadsheet to be more precise, as in: 0.005161% which it initially rounded up to .01% Sorry Greg, no candy cane this time.

[TomKenworth]

" none of the 300,000 or so automatic weapons legally owned by civilians in the US have ever found to have been used in a crime."

A perfectly true, and perfectly useless statement.

The moment one of them is stolen, is is most likely going to get used in a crime. You prequalified your pool of guns by saying, legally owned.

And I guess you missed it, the semi automatic weapons, capable of how many rounds per trigger pull (one), and likewise capable of how many rounds per minute (with a good working drum magazine) and good finger control, in the Aurora shootings, were legally owned until the second he killed his first victim.

[TomKenworth]

Or another way of looking at it, how many words can you type per minute, 60 maybe, ten fingers working of course, or how fast can you pluck a banjo or guitar?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdUrg2Cqxdw

Check this out at 1:16, and then around 3: 10, watch out!

[TomKenworth]

Now of course an individual can simply go into a store and by two boxes over and over again, but we could offer and incentive to gun store owners, just like we offer incentives to oil companies, like oil depletion allowances. In this case we could call in a nutcase depletion allowance, and it could be given in the form of tax relief to small businesses, for any and all forms of security that they install and maintain, such as multiple cameras, facial recognition software, etc., such that they might be able to detect such a person's activity, regardless of who is at the counter. You could also offer a discount to both the customer and the store owner for shell casing turn-ins, further making the "two boxes only" customer stand out better. And, of course, there should be bounties for both the store owners and the employee that sounds the alarm, and notifies the authorities, if the tip pans out. It may not catch too many folks, but after all, neither does voter registration ID procedures, and if you have to show ID to vote, why not have a "have to show ID for ammo" and let the store make a record of said ID. It would be a discouragement to wannabee copycats. DB Cooper got on board with a parachute, think you could do that today?

As for quibbles about what is or is not an "assault rifle," let's cut to the chase and call stuff "assault firearms" and have different classes of such things, with different restrictions on purchases of both ammo and for the weapons themselves. Apparently some libertarian and other similarly minded willful creatures are defending the term itself "assault rifle" and a strict definition with the tenacity that led to placing the flag on Iwo Jima, to avoid any controls being placed on other weapons, like say the 12 gauge that apparently caused most of the wounds, leading to the one and only incident of such a magnitude. Any unidirectional bomb device is made to assault something, be it a beer can or a baby. And all firearms are unidirectional bomb devices, except for one that malfunctions such that it explodes in the user's hands.

[TomKenworth]

Well Greg, if that be the Morgan State Incident, in which the engineering student turned cannibal, I am unable to find any evidence of the Administration angonizing over anything. How many folks in the Aurora Theater could have been eaten before the cops arrived. Probably not even one. Assault Firearms of every kind are the "Fast Foods" of Murder, Inc.

[Michael Anderson]

Greg asked: "Mike... was that supposed to be meaningful? Perhaps meant for a different blog?"

Dial your comedy meter up a bit, GG. I think yours is stuck on 'morose.'

[Michael Anderson]

Keach, your spam meter is stuck on 11. Dial it back a bit, please. Thanks.

[Michael Anderson]

I think this David Brooks column does an excellent job of answering your charge that Obama's comments cements him as a Marxist:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/opinion/brooks-the-credit-illusion.html?hp

[George Rebane]

MichaelA 717pm - David Brooks' palliative talked of something quite different than the propositions, programs, and proposals of Obama as witnessed by his record and words. This should not come as a surprise since one cannot expect to get a good assessment of leftwing ideologies from the NYT, one of the leading organs in the world now in the business of surreptitious selling of the same.

[Michael Anderson]

Fair enough, George. But if NYC and the NYT go down, there will be hell to pay. I don't see how you can discount the Gray Lady, any more than I would discount the WSJ. It's all valid. Extremism is the ultimate enemy.

[George Rebane]

MichaelA 1203am - I have made the case here that Obama is a leftwing extremist using his own words and deeds. Almost half of Americans today don't have a good opinion of capitalism, the only system capable continuing their QoL. This has been successfully drilled into them by the Left starting in the days they attended government schools.

You seem to imply that 'extremism' is an absolute measure of an ideology. Maybe so. But in such an absolute world view, in your opinion what are the tenets of free market capitalism (my 'conservetarianism') that make that ideology an absolute extreme?