Is President Obama a Socialist?

Be not deceived: evil company corrupts good morals...

I Corinthians 15:33

Today, more than ever, people do not study history, nor do they research the sources from which they are reading.  So, today, I began to read more on Vladimir Lenin's Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, which was written in 1919 and published in 1920.  This essay by Lenin gives insight into the communist movement that began to flow throughout the world around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. The similarities to Lenin's outline of the communist movement, dictatorship of the proletariat-transition from capitalism to socialism, and what goes on today is interesting, especially as I began to look into some old college books from political science during the 1980s when I was studying for my undergraduate degree at Arkansas State University.

The book I was revisiting was State and Local Politics: Fundamentals & Perspectives by Michael Engel.  I had an idea when I began going through it that Professor Engel was definitely a socialist, because his writing was a reflection of this ideology which reflected that of the socialist. However, with the wonderful world-wide web, thanks to our former Vice President Al Gore, I began to research Dr. Engle.  Low and behold, I did find him still at Westfield State College in Massachusetts, but I also discovered him running for Congress on the Independent Party ticket for the First District. What was really interesting, was the article that he wrote in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on March 9, 2009.  Not only does he announce that he is a self-proclaimed Socialist, but he also goes on to describe in his own words exactly what a socialist is, which actually describes what the Obama administration has continued to implement. (Just a side note, it's funny how socialists tend to run on the Independent ticket. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), self-proclaimed socialist running on the Independent ticket was the first Socialist to be elected to Congress in 2006.  He is also the writer and supporter of the 'single-payer health-care bill' that was read in Congress before Christmas).

Engel states in the article that "Buying up failed banks, throwing billions at AIG, preventing massive foreclosures, propping up state and local governments, fighting deflation and deficit spending, and subsidizing 'green' economic experiments have nothing to do with socialism, and everything to do with avoiding a collapse of the capitalist system." What he doesn't say is that those in this same administration were the ones who helped to create that housing bubble in the first place in May of 2005 with Franklin Raines at the helm at that time serving as chair to Fannie Mae. He later resigned. It was in January of 2005 that three senators--Chuck Hagel (R-Neb), John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) and Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) introduced tough new legislation to regulate Fannie and Freddie.  Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats opposed any effort to limit funds through the new legislation on the table. So those who created the problem and caused the collapse are still sitting there with their hands in the tils receiving millions of dollars in stimulus in the guise of correcting it, while at the same time blaming the people who were trying to keep it from happening.(American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: Regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Now it Gets Serious, by Peter J. Wallison, May 2005).

Engel goes on to say, "Putting aside the complex economics of that argument, perhaps the clearest statement of a socialist perspective in an American context--and one that explicitly draws the dividing line between capitalist and socialist politicians and policies--came from Eugene Debs, five-time Socialist party candidate for president from 1900-1920. Before being sentenced to federal prison in 1918 for making a speech opposing U.S. participation in World War I (yes, that was a crime.)[Note: Democrat President Wilson was the one to enact the Espionage Act of 1917 making it a crime to speak out against the government], he spoke to the court:

I believe, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned--that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of the few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all...I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

It is through that statement that Dr. Engel actually only validated President Obama's Socialistic policies. They have spent trillions of dollars, basically purchasing car companies, (destroying individually owned dealerships), banks, mortgage companies, college loans, etc, and now they are trying to obtain a single-payer Health-care System, and had it not been for the outrage of both Republicans and Blue-dog Democrats, they would have gotten that too. So, let's see...the government now owns and controls these industries....what's next, Dr. Engel? So, is President Obama a Socialist? Think about it.