How much of a socialist is President Obama? According to Jim Gilmore—the former Republican governor of Virginia whom Democrat Mark Warner trounced in last year’s Senate race—Obama is so much of a socialist that he’s created his own form of socialism.
We have learned a lot in the first one hundred days of the Obama administration. The most important lesson is that this administration’s operating ideology isn’t old-style liberalism or even old-style socialism. President Obama and his team are delivering a “New Socialism.”
Their “New Socialism” doesn’t need to capture property. It is content to control the economy through taxation and regulation and the attitudes of our citizens by the establishment of a culture through the power institutions of our society: the media, the education establishment, and powerful business interests. Moreover, the “New Socialism” seeks to create a conventional wisdom that discredits all alternative thought.
So now socialism doesn’t even have to look or act like socialism to be socialism. New Socialists just have to try to control someone’s “attitude” about something through the media, education, and/or powerful business interests.
That’s a pretty big umbrella. (After all, trying to change an attitude about something through powerful business interests is “New Socialism.” Does that make our last administration New Socialist?) So it got me thinking: What other politicos fit under Gilmore’s New Socialism tent? How about Jim Gilmore? Let’s see: Gilmore now heads up USA Secure, a security think tank comprised of “key national technology and infrastructure companies.” What do they do?
Our goal is to gather a broad group of industries, first-responder non-profits, think tanks, and universities to speak with a steady and strong voice to all the different departments of government, particularly the Department of Homeland Security.
So it looks like Gilmore is using industry and universities to peddle influence to the government. That might end up changing or controlling some attitudes. Sounds pretty New Socialist to me.
