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The funny thing is, of course, that socialists know that Barack Obama is not one of us. Not only is he not a socialist, he may in fact not even be a liberal. Socialists understand him more as a hedge-fund Democrat -- one of a generation of neoliberal politicians firmly committed to free-market policies.

The first clear indication that Obama is not, in fact, a socialist, is the way his administration is avoiding structural changes to the financial system. Nationalization is simply not in the playbook of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his team. They favor costly, temporary measures that can easily be dismantled should the economy stabilize. Socialists support nationalization and see it as a means of creating a banking system that acts like a highly regulated public utility. The banks would then cease to be sinkholes for public funds or financial versions of casinos and would become essential to reenergizing productive sectors of the economy.

The same holds true for health care. A national health insurance system as embodied in the single-payer health plan reintroduced in legislation this year by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), makes perfect sense to us. That bill would provide comprehensive coverage, offer a full range of choice of doctors and services and eliminate the primary cause of personal bankruptcy -- health-care bills. Obama's plan would do the opposite. By mandating that every person be insured, ObamaCare would give private health insurance companies license to systematically underinsure policyholders while cashing in on the moral currency of universal coverage. If Obama is a socialist, then on health care, he's doing a fairly good job of concealing it.

Issues of war and peace further weaken the commander in chief's socialist credentials. Obama announced that all U.S. combat brigades will be removed from Iraq by August 2010, but he still intends to leave as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq and wishes to expand the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A socialist foreign policy would call for the immediate removal of all troops. It would seek to follow the proposal made recently by an Afghan parliamentarian, which called for the United States to send 30,000 scholars or engineers instead of more fighting forces.

Yet the president remains "the world's best salesman of socialism," according to Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. DeMint encouraged supporters "to take to the streets to stop America's slide into socialism." Despite the fact that billions of dollars of public wealth are being transferred to private corporations, Huckabee still felt confident in proposing that "Lenin and Stalin would love" Obama's bank bailout plan.

Huckabee is clearly no socialist scholar, and I doubt that any of Obama's policies will someday appear in the annals of socialist history. The president has, however, been assigned the unenviable task of salvaging a capitalist system intent on devouring itself. The question is whether he can do so without addressing the deep inequalities that have become fundamental features of American society. So, President Obama, what I want to know is this: Can you lend legitimacy to a society in which 5 percent of the population controls 85 percent of the wealth? Can you sell a health-care reform package that will only end up enriching a private health insurance industry? Will you continue to favor military spending over infrastructure development and social services?

My guess is that the president will avoid these questions, further confirming that he is not a socialist except, perhaps, in the imaginations of an odd assortment of conservatives. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009
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Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” 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.

{The author goes on to describe living under true Socialism, with personal examples.}

Whatever his faults, I don’t see much of a socialist in Mr. Obama or, thankfully, signs of that system in this great nation. Mr. Obama is accused of trying to expand the reach of government — into health care, financial regulation, the auto industry and so on. It’s fair to question whether the federal government should have expanded powers: America, to its credit, has debated this since its birth. But let’s be clear about how frightening socialism actually could be.

I’m not sure Americans today appreciate quite how predatory socialism was. It was not — as Mr. Obama’s detractors suggest — merely a government so centralized and bloated that it hobbled private enterprise: it was a spoils system that killed off everything, all in the name of “social justice.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/opinion/obama-the-socialist-not-even
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Ever since President Barack Obama released the budget last month, we have been hearing a fusillade of criticism claiming that the president, contrary to previous advertising, is not a centrist, but a "leftie" intent on leading the country down the path of socialism.

Let's see. Socialism means public ownership and control of businesses, right? So which industries does the president propose to nationalize?

Banking? Well, no. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner has made it clear that he opposes nationalizing banks, despite much outcry from the political left -- and even some from the right -- to do just that.

What about health care? Doesn't Mr. Obama want "socialized medicine"? No. He wants to reform the current system so that it costs less and covers more people. Disgracefully, the United States is the only advanced nation in the world that fails to cover every citizen -- even though we spend vastly more on health care than other nations.

Some reformers want the U.S. to adopt a single-payer system like other countries, such as "socialist" Canada and England -- which run firmly capitalist economies, by the way. But regardless of whether single-payer is a good idea, it's not Mr. Obama's. His health-insurance reform plan emphasizes choice, greater efficiency (partly by utilizing information technology), and portability (your health coverage will follow you from job to job). Which part of that is socialist?

And, once again, the Obama budget recognizes, rather than hides, the need to pay the bills. Half the cost of health reform would be covered by a tax provision that has really raised a ruckus: Capping itemized deductions at the 28% bracket rate. Let's consider how socialist that idea is.

As the law now stands, when a family that does not itemize deductions on its tax return donates $100 to its favorite charity, the donation costs the family $100. But when an itemizing family in the 25% bracket donates $100, it costs them only $75 after tax. And when an itemizer in the 35% bracket donates $100, the after-tax cost is only $65. Thus the richer you are, the less it costs. Is it socialistic to say that seems a little backwards?

If that tax treatment strikes you as fair, try another example. Suppose those same three families each pay $10,000 a year in interest on their home mortgages. The cost to the non-itemizer is the full $10,000. For the family in the 25% bracket that itemizes, the net cost after taxes is only $7,500. And for the upper-income family in the 35% bracket that itemizes, the net cost is a mere $6,500. Just imagine a member of Congress proposing a homeownership subsidy like that directly, rather than through the tax code: 35% to the rich, 25% to the middle class, and nothing to the poor. Would anyone support it?

Enter Mr. Obama, the alleged leftist. Does he propose to end this "class warfare" on the middle and lower classes? No. He only wants to mitigate it slightly. He would reduce the 35% subsidy rate to 28% -- which would still leave the costs of charitable giving, mortgage interest, and much else far lower for the rich than for the poor. That's hardly a radical proposal. Indeed, it has been under discussion since the 1980s.

It's true: The president would like to do a bit more. Elsewhere in the budget, he proposes letting the Bush upper-bracket tax cuts expire in 2011, meaning the top rate would revert to where it was during the Clinton years: 39.6%. And Mr. Obama would still cap deductibility at 28%.

Unsurprisingly, the president's proposal to let the top rate return to 39.6% has unleashed a firestorm of criticism from people who claim that such radical redistribution would prolong the recession, destroy entrepreneurship, and pretty much end capitalism as we know it -- just as it did during the Great Prosperity of the 1990s, I suppose. Some claims parody themselves.

So where does all this leave us on the road to socialism? If Mr. Obama is able to get all of these proposals through Congress, the U.S. will have a fully private banking system, propped up with temporary government support; a uniquely American health-care system that covers virtually everyone; and a somewhat more progressive income tax. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123751241072091037

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