Yesterday, Barack Obama spoke in Colorado, and said something that may be of interest to Joe the Plumber:
Now, make no mistake: the change we need won’t come easy or without cost. We will all need to tighten our belts, we will all need to sacrifice and we will all need to pull our weight because now more than ever, we are all in this together.
The tone is miserable, and the suggestion is vaguely collectivist. Traditionally, leaders of free-market nations tell citizens to go out and spend in a financial crisis. They hope consumers can put life-blood back into an ailing system. George W. Bush told people to shop after 9/11. Barack Obama likes to laugh at that, but it was exactly right. Obama’s answer to crisis? Self-sacrifice and togetherness.
It’s not that Obama is necessarily a socialist; it’s that his roots are so thoroughly intertwined with those of socialists he doesn’t know when he’s saying something that makes capitalists go white. Benito Mussolini said that fascism is “a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests, realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies.” Only a lunatic would compare Obama to Mussolini, but the very sane Jonah Goldberg is right to compare certain strains of liberalism with fascism. Look at Obama’s statement and at Mussolini’s. The common thread is unmistakable. The government will tell the individual how to sacrifice for the common good–because the common good is ultimately the individual good. Start spreadin’.
