In recent weeks the Republican Candidate for President of the United States, John McCain, has attacked Barack Obamafor what he sees as his socialistic beliefs. The root of these claims come from Joe the Plumber, an individual who got into it with Obama over his tax plan, which would call for a taxation of all Americans who make more than $250,000. Joe the Plumber said he was looking to open a small business in the near future, but under the Obama plan he would be heavily taxed if he made more than $250,000. Obama went on to imply that he was looking to redistribute the wealth from the wealthiest Americans down to the poorest. Obama’s exact words were, ” I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Some may argue that this doesn’t mean that Obama wants to redistribute the wealth of America, but consider this: in an endorsement by Gen. Colin Powell (Ret.), Powell said that Obama wasn’t a socialist, but that what taxes do is redistribute. Let’s get one thing straight before we move on, Gen. Powell is wrong. If you want to put your semi-socialist, Barack Obama loving glasses on then you can see taxation as a means of redistribution. Yet, taxes are universal and everyone’sfunds are taken in order to help finance government programs, and pay government officials. Your tax dollars go to things like the Iraq War and rebuilding roads. For fans of the earlier days of the Democratic party, you will agree with Andrew Jackson that a state should fix their own roads without Federal money. This view radically changed under Franklin Roosevelt, who himself faces postmortem charges of socialism. He started the wellfare state with his introduction of Social Security. Lyndon B. Johnson further helped create the system with his Great Society program, which among other things extended these programs and even created new ones. If you look at these programs, than it is easy to see where Gen. Powell is coming from. Only one problem, these programs don’t help universally all the poor as a true socialistic policy would operate. Everyone who works, and is therefore taxed, has taxes taken out to help Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security.
What Barack Obama has in mind goes deeper than what FDR or LBJ had in mind. Obama, per his response to Joe, wants to take money from the wealthiest Americans and give it to the poorest. Point blank, no sugar coat, Obama has said he wants to redistribute the wealth. In 2001 Barack Obama had an interview on a Chicago radio station: Chicago Public Radio. During the interview Obama lamented that the Warren Court failed to redistribute wealth during the civil rights cases. The Warren Court is considered to be the most liberal of all the Supreme Courts we have ever had. Obama charges in the interview that it isn’t that radical because, while it gave the black man the right to sit at the lunch counter with whites, “they should have also appealed for the right to have someone else pay for the meal.”(Foxnews Election Central) Obama goes so far as to say, “It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted.” Meaning, that the Constitution was written with certain constraints put on it by the Framers. In other words, Obama states, “that the Constitution is a document of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted.” His charge is nothing more than that government should be given the right to do whatever it feels is necessary to help the people. This is a similar belief of the Soviets, Communist Chinese, Communist North Koreans, Communist Cubans, and Nazis.
During the early part of the 20th century, and the late 19th century, men like Woodrow Wilson and John Dewey believed that the government should be reformed to the point where it can react quicker to the desires of the people. They also assert that government should be run by professionals, rather than by elected individuals who have no knowledge of the subject they were elected to. As a result they were able to draft, and pass, the 17th Amendment which gives the election of Senators to the people. The “negative” Constitution spoken of by Obama is similar to what the Progressives saw. The connection between Obama and the Progressives is that the Progressives developed out of Germany, and was helped started by men like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who wrote such books as Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. Both books argue for a socialist society where the government is used to make all men equal in a way the Founders never would have understood. The end game for Marx and Engels is Communism, which comes about from a Capitalistic Society, which transforms into a Socialist Society and then finally into the destruction of the government, and of wealth/property. Wealthand property have been viewed as the root of all evil by various individuals, but none went so far as to suggest the total destruction of both than Marx and Engels. The destruction of government wasn’t a new idea to America either, men like Emerson and Thoreau.
Obama’ssuggestion that our Constitution is filled with negatives on both Federal and State legislatures is a bad reading of the Constitution. In fact, the Constitution gives power to the Federal government to: lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises in order to pay for debt, provide common defense and general welfare, to borrow money, to regulate international and interstate commerce, to create a uniform rule for naturalization and bankruptcies. to coin and value money, to fix the standards of weights and measures, to provide punishment for counterfeiting, to establish the post office, to promote arts and sciences through patents, to constitute inferior courts, to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the seas, to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water, to raise and support the army, to provide and maintain the Navy, to make rules for Government and regulation of the land and naval Forces, provide for the calling of the militia to execute laws of the nation and repel insurrections and invasions, providing/organizing/arming/disciplining the militia, exercise exclusion legislation in all cases whatsoever over all lands ceded by the states for the Federal Government for a seat of government, forts, magazines, arsenals, dock yards and other needful buildings, and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper. That is everything explicitly given tot he Federal government to do. Anyone who is a student of politics knows that this gives the Federal Government extension power to do whatever it sees fit.
Barack Obama’s comments to Joe the Plumber and previously to Chicago Public Radio explicitly socialist. Obama wants to redistribute the wealth and beliefs that the civil rights era failed because it did not achieve redistribution. All of these charges coming from a man who has had one of the most privileged lives by anyone of his race. It is outrageous for anyone to suggest that Barack Obama does not harbor socialist tendencies now that it is clear he has explicitly argued for redistribution of wealth.
