Is Barack Obama a socialist?  Is he a communist?  Karl Marx used those terms interchangeably, but nowadays “socialist” and “communist” mean different things. - Socialism is much less severe than communism.  Socialists generally support democracy, freedom in non-economic spheres of life, pacifism, and a profound leveling of incomes and wealth.  Communism is totalitarian in aspect.  Communists utterly reject genuine democracy and also reject all forms of individual liberty.  Communism is brutally militant.

Socialism is bad, but not nearly as bad as Communism.  Sweden, for example, was effectively governed by socialists for much of the last century.  There is much to deplore about Sweden.  , Swedes have a high rate of suicide, alcoholism, and illegitimate children.  But it is silly and dishonest to pretend that Sweden is like Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The greatest evil of Sweden is its utter inability to resist evil.  So, during the Cold War, Sweden blamed America more than Russia.  During the Second World War, Sweden, the neutral nation best able to resist Hitler was the neutral most pliant in his hands.  It should be no surprise today that in Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city with a large Moslem population, attacks on Jews – including a ninety year old Holocaust survivor - by Moslems is growing common or that a Muslim In Malmo who was denied unemployment for refusing to shake hands with a female CEO who might have given him a job, won his appeal because, as a Moslem in Sweden, he had a right to treat women with contempt.

Socialism is founded upon the same myth as Nazism, Communism, Fascism or any other misology of the left:  man can and should create Heaven on Earth and there is no divine prohibition on how to make this manufactured paradise.  The end, always, justifies the means.  God, always, is dead in our lives.  So Swedish Socialism can never resist real evil and it almost always sides with the loudest, meanest bully in the room.

That may be the path to doom planned for us by Obama:  destroy all our transcendent values; create a nanny-state which doles out all the goodies of life; genuflect to every thug who curses at you; preside over a people who drown the fear and loneliness of secular life with booze, drugs, promiscuity, and rampant hedonism.  Citizens of such a nation are cattle or sheep, but they are cattle and sheep who receive the good care that such animals typically receive on a farm or a ranch.  This future would be a “Brave New World,” rather than a “1984.” We would be physically comfortable, even as our souls suffered unrelenting torments.  That is what a slide into socialism would probably mean for America.  Socialists could still lose elections.  The British Labour Party, the Social Democrats of Germany, and the Socialists in Sweden all lost elections from time to time and surrendered power to a party of the “right.” The structures of social dependency on government would be so great, however, that even when the socialists lost power, nothing much would really change. 

More troubling is the threat of latent totalitarianism – the silent, staring leopard of angry Marxism, ready to pounce, to savage, and to devour.  The step toward communism is a step over the cliff to a quick, ghastly fate.  Is this what Obama wants?  We should suspect any Democrat administration to have its share of socialists and other leftists, people who want to make America like Sweden.  What ought to trouble us much more is an administration with communists, people who want to make America into Cuba.

Van Jones is a self-described communist.  Anita Dunn described Mao Tse Tung as one of her heroes.  Bill Ayers was a violent leftist who belonged to communist front organizations.  “Uncle Frank” of Obama’s own biography was a member of the Communist Party.  How such Americans react to these associations?  Here is an easy way to see the danger:  substitute “Nazi” for “Communist” and “Hitler” for “Mao.”

The two systems were, in almost every respect, identical.  Nazis and Communists created horrific secret police forces, huge systems of camps into which millions died, imposed an absolute control over education, information, and entertainment, embraced a hatred of Jews with a hatred of Christians, and pretended that all the evils they committed were done on behalf of the people.

We all know about the evils of Nazism, which are, rightly, synonymous with malice against mankind.  We seldom hear, though, of the evils of Communism.  The Second World War began when Communists and Nazis reached a treaty dividing Eastern Europe and agreeing to support each other in every other way – a treaty followed in spirit as well as in letter by both Nazis and Communists for almost two years.  Without the malicious compliance of Communists, there would have been no Second World War. 

The Soviets had to construct huge systems of military fortifications to keep people from leaving Warsaw Pact communist nations.  In the last years of the Soviet empire, life expectancy was actually dropping.  Living conditions for ordinary Russians made our worst slums seem pleasant. Party leaders and other bosses of Soviet society lives in a completely different and insulated world of privilege, but even many of these “defected” when they got the chance. 

Could anyone embrace Communism?  What was there about the Gulag that sane and moral people missed?  When one sixth of the earth was a giant prison, what led good people to still believe in communism?  The answer to these questions is ugly.  Communism, like Nazism, is pure evil.  Has Obama ever said that, even once?  No.  The conclusions we must draw from that are clear and troubling.  Obama is not a misguided socialist, as so many on the left.  He is a militant Marxist who believes that anything is justified in the cause of the Revolution.

Bruce Walker
© 2010 Bruce Walker