Do Americans Understand What Socialism Is?

By Frank Salvato —— Bio and Archives October 25, 2008

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Barack Obama’s short but illuminating conversation with Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher has ushered the subject of Socialism to center stage. By stating that he champions an economic policy that would “spread the wealth around,” Senator Obama alarmed many Americans who recognize the parallels between his statement and one espoused by French Socialist Louis Blanc in 1840:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” In defense of his statement, Obama, his campaign and his massive army of Obamabot surrogates have come out hard against those who are making the correlation between the Obama economic agenda and the Marxist economic model. During a campaign stop in Richmond, Virginia, Obama scoffed at the charge that his economic policies were born of Socialist ideology and the Marxist influence predominant among the adults who surrounded him in his youth, calling the use of such "implausible" arguments an, "indication they have run out of ideas." A barrage of callers to conservatives talk radio programs – not surprisingly the overwhelming majority of them Black, took an indignant tone calling any and all criticism of Barack Obama’s economic policies – and for that matter any criticism of Barack Obama at all – as an emanation of the underlying racism that exists in each and every Caucasian heart in the United States...not among other races, not among the Black population, just the Caucasian race. More...