What “surprises” Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik (8/30/09) more than this summer’s news full of “baroque conspiracy theories” and “weepy hysteria” is “the idea that these are somehow unprecedented.”
Hiltzik looks back to an earlier era of supposed presidential “socialism” in the U.S. to see such current claims as “merely the latest examples of a phenomenon that might be called Wirtism”–a label Hiltzik “just coined… to honor the memory of William A. Wirt”:
Wirt’s day in the sun came back in 1934, when the obscure Midwestern blowhard placed himself at the center of a political maelstrom by “discovering” a plot by members of Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain Trust to launch a Bolshevik takeover of the United States.
That Wirt’s yarn was transparently absurd didn’t keep it from being taken seriously on the front pages of newspapers coast to coast, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. He gave speeches, wrote a book and went to Washington to give personal testimony at a standing-room-only congressional hearing.If that reminds you of the overly solicitous treatment given by the press, cable news programs and Republican office holders to purveyors of such lurid claptrap as the Obama birth certificate story or the fantasy of healthcare “death panels,” now you know why it pays to study history.
One “reason not to chuckle condescendingly at Wirt,” Hiltzik warns, “is the thought of what might happen were he to walk the Earth today,” when Hiltzik thinks that “rather than being disowned in embarrassment, he’d be lionized as a purveyor of an alternate truth” while “given a gig on cable news and touted as a presidential contender for 2012.”
Of course Obama isn’t a socialist.
That would require him to have a modicum of humanity, wouldn’t it?
And I’d think it’d be incumbent upon “progressives” to make a clear distinction between socialism, as I and many others define it, and the totalitarian hellholes that were and are the USSR and the past and present PRC.
Otherwise you’re just playing these bastards’ game, aren’t you?
“McCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term specifically describes activities associated with the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, “McCarthyism” soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.” (Wikipedia – McCarthyism)
When people make these crazy claims that “Obama is a Terrorist”, “Obama is trying to create a communist dictatorship”, you have to do a little critical thinking. The whole argument is a complete fallacy.
Premise1: “Socialists say we should give all people health care”
Premise2: “Obama wants to give everyone health care”
Conclusion: “Obama is a socialist”
This is a fallacy, let me show you why.
Premise1: A says B
Premise2: C says B
Conclusion: C is A
Using this formula you can “logically” deduce the following…
Premise1: “Cats have fur”
Premise2: “My dog has fur”
Conclusion: “Therefore, my dog is a cat”
Does that make sense to you?
You might as well say America is ALREADY socialist because we have Social Security…
Crazies go one step further by saying because Obama is “illogically” a socialist and that he is trying to indocrinate our children!!! This is simply extrapolation based on faulty logic.
Are people really this dumb?! The media feeds people propaganda, and look at all the people buying into it!!!