Ron Paul: "Obama's Not A Socialist, He's A Corporatist"

From Dr. Ron Paul,via the Obamabot site Talking Points Memo:

"The question has been raised about whether or not our president is a socialist," Paul said. "I am sure there are some people here who believe it. But in the technical sense, in the economic definition of a what a socialist is, no, he's not a socialist."

"He's a corporatist," Paul continued. "And unfortunately we have corporatists inside the Republican party and that means you take care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country."

Ron Paul isn't wrong about everything, but he's wrong about a good deal. And here, we have the interesting spectacle of him labeling someone in a way that could provide real food for thought...if he had been smart enough to define it correctly.

Corporatism, contrary to what Dr. Paul might believe is not an original term of his. It's been around since the 1930's, and was one way of accurately describing fascism. What it really means is a system of government that 'incorporates' and consolidates industries and institutions in such a way as to control them completely via government- run bureaucracies.

Under Hitler and Mussolini, virtually every area of economic, social and political life was governed with an iron hand by various 'departments', 'ministries' or 'bureaus'...unions, religious and social groups, small business,health care, large corporations, the media, the entertainment business, farming, youth groups, education, the law..you name it, there was a government entity that had total and complete control over it.

This differs from what Stalin was doing solely in that private ownership of a sort was retained, albeit under rigid control rather than outright and total government ownership.. It's all ice cream, but call it chocolate as opposed to vanilla.

This definition was so well known during the rise of fascism that best selling author Sinclair Lewis, in his 1930's novel "It Can't Happen here" used the term 'Corpos' as the name of the American fascist group that takes over the United States in the novel.

In contrast to Dr. Paul's faulty definition, it's not the corporations that run the government but the government that runs the corporations...and everything else.

So is Obama a 'Corporatist', in the actual sense of the word? Based on the unprecedented government takeovers and control of business and institutions and the expanding federal bureaucracy under the Obama Administration, it certainly smells that way, and at least would have been worth discussing..if Dr. Ron Paul had bothered to know what he was talking about.

please donate...it helps me write more gooder!