I'm touched that you came back just to continue arguing with me, but unfortunately, you've again managed to misquote me at every step of the way.
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On the GM article you made the accusation that it was based upon assumptions and that it supposedly only had one citation - and you didn't give a citation to back your accusation that it was based on assumptions!
I never said that article was based on assumptions; I said it didn't cite sources. That means the information is unverifiable.
The rest of your supposed quotations of me are equally unrepresentative. I never accused anyone of cherry-picking, for instance; I have no idea what percentage of Obama's associations are with socialists, self-identified or otherwise, merely that it wasn't a basis to frame policies. I noted that their logic was such that individual associations were being used as evidence, anecdotal case after anecdotal case, which is what they displayed, but if I never mentioned that his list of such associations might be quite large, it's only because it went without saying. The relevance of such associations to the tangible effects of his policies doesn't change based on that number, and so, nor does the soundness of the logic. If you felt I downplayed the percentage of his associations that were socialist, and want me to retract those statement, then show me a source that outlines what percentage of Obama's friends and colleagues are socialist. I mean, what if 70% of them are capitalists? Doesn't that mean his associations would more establish him as a capitalist? I could point out that Obama's treasury secretary worked for Goldman Sachs for ten years, a seemingly capitalist person, but just pointing that out is to say
nothing about actual policy. Again, that was the point; the line or argument is inane, because the cases are
both anecdotal and irrelevant to an evaluation of policy.
If you're going to take exception to what I say, then it should be to what I actually say, not invented strawman statements.
You see, this is the me (albeit from a number of years ago):
and this is who you're quoting:
Now, if, per chance, I did mistakenly claim that an article made up or assumed all its statements, based solely on a lack of citations to verify its claims, then feel free to quote that exact statement to me, and I will happily retract it, because I lack the information to make such a statement.
If, on the other hand, the above shown straw man said it, then I can't take responsibility for it. If you want to argue with him, then I'll give him an account, but please don't ascribe his statements to me.
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So the *fact* that obama gave 65% ownership of chry to the unions, the *fact* that obama gave 17% ownership of GM to the unions, the *fact* that obama pushed for and put his name on a pice of legistlation that makes all medical care socialized, the *fact* that obama has been signing regulations into law at a break-neck rate... these facts... the somehow ... don't exist?
Or the *fact* that obama has a life-long self-expressed desire to choose other socialists as his friends, co-workers, and confidants, ... the fact that the main mentor in his life, as he says,
in his own auto-biography, was a fanatical socialist, who told him to be careful to not loose his socialist "edge" when he went to college - again, in his own auto-biography - that doesn't count either?
Or the *fact* that he has said that nobody builds their own buisness; meaning that the society did it? Or the *fact* that in his speech at osowatami, kansas is a blatant socialist style attack on free markets -
which he says have never worked - doesn't count? Or the *fact* that he said "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody" ...
And appointing a pay-czar, to control payment at banks who were *forced* to take tarp bailouts?
http://www.judicialw...lout-documents/
http://articles.busi...-bank-documents
And this is where my last post was either entirely ignored, or just not understood.
Look, PhT, Obama is hardly the first president to vastly empower unions. Unions have had a long history in this nation, always under a system that was mostly fundamentally capitalist. But if you define these things as meaning he's a "socialist", then fine. I already conceded that if you take what Obama does, define it as socialism, then clearly Obama is going to meet that definition, in that oddly circular sort of way.
The problem is: no one cares. What you're doing is little more than characterization; it's
name calling. If you want to take exception to his policies in terms of their tangible effects, then you're free to do so. I might even agree; I'm not a party-line liberal. But simply looking at policies and yelling "that's socialism" ISN'T AN ARGUMENT.
As Gauss correctly noted, we utilize a hybrid system, like all industrialized nations. Some aspects of it are in common with laissez faire capitalism, some with socialism, some even with the corporatist nature of fascism. The only disagreement is a historically relatively slight difference of opinion on how much to tinge various individual systems. Again, this is true of all nations. The UK has a
completely socialist medical system (and it's not very good compared to
hybrid systems like France's or Australia's), but most of the UK's money is still spent in a market economy. Even a large part of government contracts are to private entities who compete for that money, like BAE (and it's counterpart holders of Eurofighter GmbH), which is getting billions because they convinced the government that the Eurofighter was a worthwhile investment.
So if you point at an individual aspect or policy and say "that's socialism", it's a statement of the obvious. It doesn't mean Obama is purely socialist, anymore than Bush was purely fascist. These are extremes that the whole of the policies of a given president have never come close to meeting, as they tinge our hybrid system this way or that way. And again, what one chooses to
call a set of policies is irrelevant.
So if you want to object to the policies, make an argument that actually has something to do with the tangible effects of the policies, not what kind of name-calling you can attach to them.
Edited by Catamount, 28 August 2012 - 03:43 PM.
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Catamount, on 24 August 2012 - 01:34 PM, said:
