GEORGE BUSH AND THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/28/08)

A cranky Republican friend of mine wrote me that Barack Obama is a socialist. I replied that he was no more than an old-style liberal. Of course, amongst cranky Republicans that means that he is a quasi-socialist, if not a crypto-socialist camouflaged as a liberal.

Actually, the nasty truth is that Republicans have been the progenitors of any moves toward socialism, the latest being the rescue of Bear Stearns with a massive, unsecured, loan from the Federal Reserve. Ironically, it is the conservatives who are the crypto-socialists. As anyone in the educational field as long known, once the federal government hands out money, like an octopus, its tentacles reach out with the handout.

Henry M. Paulson, Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury, has made it plain that the investment banks receiving the governmental largess will also receive governmental supervision. As anyone knows, governmental supervision means governmental control.

The result would not be socialism in the old sense in which the government actually owns a public utility or an aircraft manufacturing company, but rather controls the utilities and companies under the guise of supervision. It might rather be called state capitalism as in Communist China.

The Bush Administration has consolidated power in the executive branch and with that aggrandizement it has extended its tentacles. After its economic policies have failed, it now offers more government as a remedy, revealing George W. Bush as a state capitalist camouflaged as pseudo-conservative.