Hey Noisy Dove,
Quack! Just kidding. But seriously though, speaking of quacks, I’ve now head Obama referred to as a fascist, a liberal, a commie, and socialist. These aren’t synonyms, right? So which is he?
Right, they’re not synonyms. But no man is described by one word alone. We’ve had these names thrown around quite a bit lately, mostly toward Obama and his side of the isle. Some people agree on the description while others disagree – and most of this confusion is due to semantics.
Socialism
So lets start with the most frequently used and most semantically abused adjective: socialist. Socialism has earned it’s self a wide definition over the past century. Karl Marx imagined that Socialism would replace Capitalism, as Capitalism replaced Feudalism. And his idea of Socialism was a path to pure Communism – where the workers would take over the means of production and form a “workers’ democracy.”
Of course, Marx didn’t calculate properly for human motivation. He focused too much on the workers’ suffering – their toil for minimal pay under the profiting entrepreneur. He envisioned a world where all workers were guaranteed minimal bounty, and ended the entrepreneur.
As it turned out, prime examples being the USSR, Cuba, and Early Communist China, the minimal 
bounty, to each according to his need, from each according to his ability, results in a goalless and unfulfilling life. Killing the entrepreneur killed the creator of wealth in order to establish a system of distribution of that wealth.
Today the National Socialist Party, and numerous other organizations, advocates a similar idea, but they have the whole world in mind. They envision a single world “workers’ democracy” with no national borders. This is one end of the Socialist spectrum.
On the other end we have the political parties of certain European countries. I don’t feel honest in granting these Socialists ideological credibility. I’ve become more and more convinced their brand of socialism is little more than populous pandering run-a-muck, shameless vote-buying – elect me and you’ll get this for –free-.
These Socialist political parties advocate for workers rights, including things like vacation time and bonuses. They push for more and bigger entitlements, more government control over business, create numerous lumbering bureaucracies, and to finance these cash-hungry ideas they tax to the limit – and beyond -business and anyone willing to create all this wealth the politicians are promising everyone. They don’t out-right kill the entrepreneur – they attempt to yolk it in order to pull the rest of us. This is the type of Socialist Obama is.
Obama talks about “spreading the wealth” and how people can make too much money – these are Socialist ideas. They come from the idea that capitalism isn’t fair, and it’s government’s job to tax those creating wealth in order to give wealth to those who aren’t.
Communism
Communism is the most inflammatory of the four terms, mostly because we’ve fought a few wars against them, some cold some hot. But if you want to be a jerk, Communism can be used to describe any group working together as a single entity. So hippy-farms and monasteries would count.
Of course, Communism in political and economic terms today describes a military dictatorship, or a government originating from a military dictatorship usually resulting from a successful populous revolution. This describes Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union.
However, if we follow the original intention of Marx, and the self-proclaimed Communist states throughout the past century, Communism is a never-achieved idea. According to the Communist Manifesto, the state must first be overtaken and the people conformed – with force if necessary. (And in all cases bloody awful force was – apparently – necessary) Then, after society has conformed to the Communist ideals, the state would naturally fall away – unneeded.
In actual effect, Communist revolutions, and their necessary force, have resulted in military dictatorships, always under an iconic ruler who is paranoid and ruthless – he had to be. If anything isn’t working out, a factory, a battle – it’s due to neglect of the Communist ideals.
Obama doesn’t fit in here. But men implementing philosophies very similar to Obama’s have enabled these destructive attempts at national Communism.
Fascist
Next we have Fascist. I think this one confuses people the most – I know it does me. This might have a lot to do with the Nazi movement in 1930s-40s Germany, which was a Fascist movement.
Many people see Fascism as the far-right of the political spectrum. This isn’t sensible though. Fascism totally rejects individualism. It’s a political and economic philosophy that can combine philosophies from either side of the political spectrum, as long as the society is organized and highly controlled as one unit – all people serving a single national identity and philosophy – no matter what that philosophy is.
In actual practice, in fact, Fascism ends up being “big government,” the thing right-wingers are always trying to hinder. And in practice, Socialism is Fascism in how it pursues Communism. The only thing really right-wing about Fascism is in how Fascists are willing and highly motivated to defend their nation.
Nazi Germany is a great example of this. People call the Nazis right-wingers, but in form and function the Nazi society ran like an efficient version of the Communist Soviets. Instead of workers revolting against factory owners, the Nazis attacked the Jews and their neighboring countries – stripping them of their wealth to fulfill their ideals.
People were calling Bush a Fascist. This was mostly due to going to war and passing legislation that encroached upon civil liberties. But if that qualified Bush as a Fascist, then Obama also is, since he’s embraced Bush’s expansion of Executive power and the idea of greater government control and national unity.
Liberal
I saved Liberal for last because it’s the easiest and least interesting term. Yes. Obama is definitely a Liberal. And I’m ignoring the numerous uses of the lower-case liberal here. I’m talking about the political term, the one interchangeable with Progressive. A general definition would be this: People should be free but government needs to own that freedom to keep it safe.
You’re free to make money, but government must own that money so they can inspect you, insure your mistakes, and distribute wealth to people who aren’t making enough money to be free according to social standards.
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Raging Kitty