Tuesday, March 24, 2009

I should've posted this months ago.

And, to be honest, the timeliness for this has probably passed, but the longer I don't post it, the more it bothers me.

Remember Obama's "share my toys" quote?

“I don’t know what’s next,” Obama said with a chuckle. “By the end of the
week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys
in kindergarten, or because I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”


What bothers me is that it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding, or perhaps an outright mischaracterization, of what communism (and, by extension, it's identical cousin socialism) is.

Communism is not sharing your toys and sandwich. In fact, under communism, they are not YOUR toys and sandwich at all; they are OURS. If you siezed all the toys and sandwiches and redistributed them according to YOUR priorities (much like you are doing with taxpayer money and AIG, Mister President), or petitioned the teacher to do the same, THAT would be communism.

Maybe that's why he doesn't think he's a socialist -- he doesn't know what a socialist IS.

While we're on the subject of redistributionist metaphors from the Left that bother me -- Hillary Clinton and the Christmas presents. What she didn't tell you is that instead of buying the presents herself, Grinch-like, she stole them out from under the trees of people she didn't think deserved them.

1 comment:

Tom Hanna said...

Sharing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich doesn't make him a Communist, it makes him a murderer! What if the kid he shared it with was allergic to peanuts? Oh, the humanity!