M2RB: Paul McCartney live from Red Square
I'm back in
the U.S.S.R.
You don't
know how lucky you are boy
Back in the
U.S.
Back in the
U.S.
Back in the
U.S.S.R.
Well the
Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave
the West behind
And Moscow
girls make me sing and shout
That
Georgia's always on my mind
Yeah I'm
back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.
B
Just when I thought I had made a convincing argument
that Obama was a politician whose outlook is akin to that of Europe’s
left-wing social democrats and that the modern Democratic Party is the
equivalent of Europe’s social-democratic parties, along comes director
Milos Forman to argue the opposite in the op-ed pages of the New York Times.
Forman, most well-known in this country as the director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus,
is a Czech émigré who lived in Czechoslovakia from 1932 until 1968,
thereby gaining first-hand experience of both Nazi and communist
totalitarianism’s opposition to freedom. He presents vivid anecdotes of
what it was like to experience the jackboot of the secret police in his
native land. He knows first-hand its horrors. Even TV interviews, he
learned, had to be scripted, when one was interviewing a leader of the
Communist Party or the state.
No one can gainsay Forman’s knowledge of totalitarian regimes. He
speaks the truth. But then he performs an agile sleight of hand that
goes like this: Totalitarianism of the communist fashion worked in a
certain way. That was socialism. What took place in communist
Czechoslovakia does not occur in the U.S. Our president is not the
equivalent of any of the Czech communists he knew so well. Therefore,
Obama is not a socialist.
Forman accuses conservatives — he names Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich,
Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh — of calling Obama a
socialist. He writes:
They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.
In making that argument, Forman reveals his own confusion, and in
effect says that to say Obama is a socialist is to say he is a
Marxist-Leninist totalitarian. Of course Obama is NOT a communist. He is
an elected leader of a politically democratic republic. He is
constrained in policies he would like to implement by a Congress and a
vigorous Republican opposition. Nevertheless, a strong case has been
made — here at PJM and in other conservative journals of opinion and in
various serious books — that Barack Obama favors and pursues policies
that are indeed the equivalent of redistributionist socialist measures
favored today, for example, by François Hollande and his new government
in France.
To make this case hardly “cheapens the experience of millions who
lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism,” as Forman
claims. The problem is that the social-democratic governments in Europe
that Forman claims only favor “government provision of social insurance
and health care” have their own serious problems. Most conservatives
favor a social safety net, adequate health care, and other common-sense
measures. What they do oppose is the limitless welfare state that
seemingly never ends in its quest to further extend its grasp, in a
manner that produces a whole new set of problems and brings modern
economies to a grinding halt.
The problem of the social welfare states in Europe was addressed most succinctly by Josef Joffe in a review of the late Tony Judt’s book Ill Fares the Land, in which Judt argued for real social democracy in the United States. Joffe, editor and publisher of the German newspaper Die Zeit, wrote the following:
The central problem with “Ill Fares the Land” is a classic fallacy of the liberal-left intelligentsia, more in Europe than in the United States. Call it the “Doctor State Syndrome.” The individual is greedy, misguided or blind. The state is the Hegelian embodiment of the right and the good that floats above the fray. But the state does not. It is a party to the conflict over “who gets what, when and how,” to recall Harold Lasswell’s definition of politics. It makes its own pitch for power; it creates privileges, franchises and clienteles. This is why it is so hard to rein in, let alone cut back. The modern welfare state creates a new vested interest with each new entitlement. It corrupts as it does good.
Joffe also points to the failures of the very welfare states in
Europe, like Sweden and France, that American left-liberals have
extolled for quite some time. The West, according to the social
democrats, has succumbed to greed, egotism, and to false free-market
prophets like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. “The wages of sin [to
the social-democrats],” Joffe puts it, “are the loss of community,
trust, equality and social justice. And the true god…is European-style
social democracy à la Scandinavia.” But, as he adds,
the market is the best information system known to man: it has millions broadcasting in real time what is offered and what is wanted at what price. This is why capitalism learns from its crises, whereas the Soviet Union just accumulated them until it collapsed.
Take the case of Sweden. Joffe notes:
Remember Sweden in the 1990s, until then the emblem of democratic socialism, where the state grabbed more than one-half of G.D.P.? It pumped up a real-estate bubble in the late 1980s, which burst in the early 1990s, driving G.D.P. down by 5 percent and unemployment up to 12 percent. In 1994, the budget deficit soared to 13 percent. This was not America in 2008, but a statist country that fits [the social-democrats] dream to a T.
America’s preeminent socialist leader in the 1980s was the late
Michael Harrington, who carried on as the spokesman for social
democracy, a post he inherited from his predecessors, Eugene V. Debs and
Norman Thomas. Harrington was well-aware that the path to socialism, in
which he ardently believed, was through continued extension of the
American welfare state. He became a vigorous supporter of a meaningless
bill passed by Congress in 1978 called the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, which stated that it was the policy of the United States to strive to attain a full employment economy.
Obama notebook purchased in the People's Republic of China |
Testifying before Congress in defense of the act, the dying Senator
Humphrey asked Harrington: “Is my bill socialism?” The socialist leader
responded, “It isn’t half that good.” His point was that socialism
needed liberalism as a focal point from which to grow. As Harrington
argued at the time, by laying out the principle that it was the duty of
the state to create full employment, socialists could build upon that to
move liberal supporters to advocate more extensive social-democratic
programs that would challenge the hegemony of capitalist social
relations, making it easier to advance real socialist measures at a
future moment.
What Forman ignores, and does not really address, is that Barack
Obama came into politics from the precincts of the Harringtonian left
wing. He was a member in Chicago of the socialist New Party, which grew
out of the activism of the Democratic Socialists of America, which
Harrington led. His past, ignored but addressed in particular by Stanley
Kurtz and now by Paul Kengor, was that of the sectarian left wing of
the 1970s and ’80s.
Forman might not see “much of a socialist in Mr. Obama,” but he also
writes that he does not see “signs of that system in this great nation.”
That is because Mr. Forman is confusing Stalinism with social
democracy. With that as his standard, he can easily ignore all signs of
socialist policies and programs favored by Barack Obama. Like the
Marxists, Obama said four years ago that we were on the verge of a
“fundamental transformation” of the United States. What did he mean by
that, if not his hope that the United States would soon become a nation
more similar to the social-democratic welfare states of Europe?
So Milos Forman is correct when he says “really existing socialism,”
as the Marxists used to call the Stalinist regimes, was “predatory” and
not merely centralized government. But the programs advocated by the
sectarian “Left” today are also advocated “in the name of ‘social
justice,’” just as Forman writes the Leninists used as the reason for
their enterprise.
One can argue whether or not the Affordable Care Act, as ObamaCare is
called, is a stepping stone to an American social democracy. Certainly,
were he still with us, Harrington would be the first to endorse it on
those grounds, just as he used that argument to get his comrades to
rally around the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. The difference is that Harrington
was upfront about his goals, and proud to use the name “socialist” to
describe the programs he supported. Today’s Left, however, prefers to
hide its agenda, and instead use amorphous terms like “progressive” to
hide their true purposes.
Socialism does not have to be the
Stalinist totalitarian variety for one to find reasons to oppose it.
There are plenty of sufficient grounds even if it is of the democratic
variety. And to call Obama’s programs “socialist” is more than
reasonable. I’m surprised that Milos Forman does not understand that.
Added funny from People's Cube:
Carter is Леони́д Ильи́ч Бре́жнев (Leonid Brezhnev)
Memories....
Brezhnev was very popular in Russia...not for
his achievements, but for his love for two things: to kiss and to get
medals.
During his final years as the head of the Soviet government, which were also the last years of his life, he had serious health problems, which resulted in him speaking with a trembling, ill-sounding voice, become very fond of publicly kissing other diplomats
he was meeting...
rewarding himself with copious amounts of medals...
along with those closest to him (~~wink, wink~~)...
Such activities though didn’t seem to very much affect his ability to sign treaties with Carter or to
even appear on TIME magazine’s cover together:
I found this one, too. The P-Diddy of the Soviet Union:
Back In The U.S.S.R. - The Beatles
Oh, flew in from Miami Beach B.O.A.C.
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boy
Back in the U.S.S.R. (Yeah)
Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Gee it's good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case
Honey disconnect the phone
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boy
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind
Aw come on!
Ho yeah!
Ho yeah!
Ho ho yeah!
Yeah yeah!
Yeah I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind
Oh, show me around your snow-peaked mountains way down south
Take me to your daddy's farm
Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out
Come and keep your comrade warm
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
Hey you don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Oh let me tell you, honey
Hey, I'm back!
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
Yes, I'm free!
Yeah, back in the U.S.S.R.
Ha ha
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boy
Back in the U.S.S.R. (Yeah)
Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Gee it's good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case
Honey disconnect the phone
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boy
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind
Aw come on!
Ho yeah!
Ho yeah!
Ho ho yeah!
Yeah yeah!
Yeah I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
You don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind
And Moscow girls make me sing and shout
That Georgia's always on my mind
Oh, show me around your snow-peaked mountains way down south
Take me to your daddy's farm
Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out
Come and keep your comrade warm
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
Hey you don't know how lucky you are boys
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Oh let me tell you, honey
Hey, I'm back!
I'm back in the U.S.S.R.
Yes, I'm free!
Yeah, back in the U.S.S.R.
Ha ha
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