March 29, 2016

Obama’s Unacceptable Love Affair With Communism

Conservatives and other Obama critics are entitled to a big “I told you so,” after Obama’s stunning admission that he doesn’t believe there’s that much difference between communism and capitalism. Actually, it’s not that stunning to people paying attention. Many of us warned about Obama’s Marxist sympathies before he was first elected president, and we’ve repeatedly pointed it out during his presidency. Obama was raised and mentored by communists and spent many years engaged in community organizing (radical leftist activism). He established himself as the most liberal member of the Senate. Yet our warnings were met with cries of extremism, irrationality and, of course, racism. I wonder what these scolds would say now.

Conservatives and other Obama critics are entitled to a big “I told you so,” after Obama’s stunning admission that he doesn’t believe there’s that much difference between communism and capitalism.

Actually, it’s not that stunning to people paying attention. Many of us warned about Obama’s Marxist sympathies before he was first elected president, and we’ve repeatedly pointed it out during his presidency. Obama was raised and mentored by communists and spent many years engaged in community organizing (radical leftist activism). He established himself as the most liberal member of the Senate. Yet our warnings were met with cries of extremism, irrationality and, of course, racism. I wonder what these scolds would say now.

After playing his fiddle in Cuba and paying homage to the romanticized Marxist Castro regime while Belgium was burning, Obama spoke to a group of young people in Argentina. He told them, essentially, that there isn’t much difference between capitalism and socialism and that they “should be practical.” He said: “You don’t have to worry about whether it neatly fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works.”

He praised President Raul Castro in Cuba for his country’s universal health care and quality education. Please don’t tell me you find that hard to believe, either.

Such extreme leftists as Obama are bound to ignore history and the mountains of evidence that render a verdict against socialism as a destroyer of prosperity and an enslaver and slayer of mankind. Their worldview compels them to advocate economic and political control over the masses for the ends they seek, and they shut themselves off from all information indicating that to exercise such control over markets prevents the very results they profess to seek.

Robert Bartley, late Wall Street Journal editor, said, “In general, ‘the market’ is smarter than the smartest of its individual participants.” This was a modern restatement of Adam Smith’s theories concerning the invisible hand of the market.

In “The Wealth of Nations,” Smith wrote that an individual who “intends only his own gain” is “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” He added: “By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”

The great Milton Friedman explained: “Smith’s key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit. No external force, no coercion, no violation of freedom is necessary to produce cooperation among individuals all of whom can benefit.”

Smith, Friedman and Bartley agreed that free market competition benefits individuals and the society as a whole and that there is no way a command economy, even managed by the most brilliant and beneficent of human beings, can possibly bring about comparable results.

Faith in Marxism, communism and socialism is grounded in human pride and promoted by people who believe they can defy the forces of human nature and the way the world works. Despite their hubris, it is impossible for a group of economic planners, no matter how gifted, to assimilate and utilize the infinite data necessary to make an economy run efficiently. In a free market, prices, profits and losses work in ways planners can’t.

Thomas Sowell, in “Basic Economics,” tells us: “Prices are not just ways of transferring money. Their primary role is to provide financial incentives to affect behavior in the use of resources and their resulting products. Prices not only guide consumers, they guide producers as well. … Producers cannot possibly know what millions of different consumers want.” Sowell adds that losses are equally important to profits for economic efficiency because they “tell producers what to stop doing — what to stop producing, where to stop putting resources, what to stop investing in. Losses force the producers to stop producing what consumers don’t want.”

Sowell notes that in allocating resources, command economies stifle the work of free market prices because in a command economy, prices are set not by supply and demand but by central planners. In other words, no matter how noble their goals, the planners lack the omniscience of market forces.

People with a modicum of common sense and basic fairness must acknowledge that among the reasons the United States has been uniquely prosperous is its free market system. They must also concede that socialism results in widespread poverty, misery and death. It has been estimated that in the 20th century, communist regimes in China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, North Korea, Eastern Europe and elsewhere killed nearly 100 million people.

Yet our president is gallivanting about the globe telling young people and anyone else who’ll listen that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between communism and capitalism.

This kind of pernicious thinking is what is leading to the impoverishment and destruction of the United States, and it must be defeated, which is why in November, we must elect a candidate who clearly understands the relationship among limited government, our liberties and prosperity. The one candidate who believes that our unalienable rights come from God and that they are preserved by the scheme of limited government enshrined in the U.S. Constitution is Sen. Ted Cruz.

COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.