At the so-called "conservative" Republican gathering (CPAC) this weekend, former Representative Newt Gingrich characterized the actions of the Obama administration as proving that Obama wanted to transform the USA into a European style socialist state. Claims by Gingrich and other speakers over the weekend included breast beating that they were the party of liberty and small government. This is certainly a demonstration that the Republican Party is the party of denial. Beginning with Gingrich's characterization of Obama one necessarily must search for the context of the charge. When one looks at Europe we see a number of states, including Sweden, the one most often pointed to in horror by Republicans as Socialist. However, the nature of the comparison with the USA should cause us to pause and analyze the differences and similarities, and the behavior of the Republicans over the past 30 years seems to show they are really acting like communists in the Soviet style. For a moment let's suspend labels and see what people have done, forget the dogma and look at behavior, then the Republicans really do look like Stalin's children.
European states often have universal health care, seldom engage in aggressive behavior, have highly regulated markets and distribution, generally avoid legislating on prohibitions of individual sexual behavior, allow choice in abortion, family structure, drug use and provide nearly free education and often subsidized housing. If we look for a country that is close to the limits on freedom we must look to the now defunct Soviet Union. However, these limits really describe the USA after Reagan and Bush, Sr. and Jr., a nation that controls access to drugs, tells its citizens who they can legally have sex with, what kind of family they can have, concentrated wealth, created monopolies like the Gosbank (think Citibank) and drove the country and its allies into bankruptcy. Sound familiar? The controlling party told its citizens that it would eventually eliminate government and make them all possessors of the wealth of the nation while they really impoverished the Russian people and made themselves rich. This is what the Republican Party has done and rightwing anticommunists always added to the Soviet crimes that it was an aggressive state, just what the Republicans have made America into with our now 19th year of the longest war in our history in Iraq. Republicans have always claimed to fight to make government smaller when they have had the opposite effect, just like Soviet communists. Like Soviet communists who used Marxist ideology to justify their rule, Republicans have used Christian ideology to justify theirs and give their actions legitimacy. Bush argued for the "ownership society" and Reagan the trickle down effect. In both cases Americans became poorer and Republicans richer. I think this demonstrates that Republicans are really communists and for Gingrich to call Obama a socialist really is characteristic of how communists have claimed historically that socialists were moderates who respected democratic ends and equality. We are seeing their true colors.
Niccolo Caldararo