Anywho, for a while now, even during his campaign, the fringe right (I include the majority of the Republican Party in this category) have labeled US President Barack Obama as a socialist, fascist Muslim, racist, terrorist, Kenyan, Arab and an all around bad guy. Unsubstantiated rumors of death panels and government takeover are rampant from the right as Obama proposes health care reform. In this post I will do my best to debunk and make most of those points moot and unusable. Here goes nothin'.
Citizenship:
Well, this would be hilarious if it wasn't still widely used by the fringe right in America. First off, let's address his citizenship. He IS an American citizen, born in Honolulu, Hawaii. There is no valid argument against this. Factcheck.org has in fact debunked the idea that he is not a natural born citizen. Although this particular conspiracy theory should be a moot point by now, many on talk-radio such as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and others still advocate it. It just boggles my mind that people are this stupid.
Religion:
Obama, first of all, was not raised in a religious household. In fact, he developed his religious beliefs in his adult life. In 1988 he became a member of, and was baptized at, "Trinity United Church of Christ" and remained there for 20 years, until some "controversial" statements made by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, which we can discuss the validity of at another time, led to his departure from the church. Once again there is absolutely no evidence to support the claim he is a Muslim apart from how he attended a Madrasah and had a Muslim father. Well, I attended a Christian school, church, and had religious Christian grandparents. I'm an Agnostic now. The burden of proof is upon the right.
Racism:
This was suggested by Glen Beck and others, but is not a widely used idea. I mean, Glen Beck could say the Earth IS round, I would have to then look it up to see if it is true.
Socialist and Fascist; taking away our rights and freedoms!:
This idea has come from the right wing as a whole pretty much. With tea baggers, talk radio idiots, FOX news, Joe "The tax evading, unlicensed plumber" Wurzelbacher and the now unemployed blogger Sarah Palin pretty much agreeing that he is a socialist and a fascist, we can see how the right has come to accept these ideas as true. This is notably a prime example of the right wing advocacy of an Idiocracy, which is a government made up of idiots.
Socialism and Fascism are on the opposite side of the spectrum. So, the first thing i will ask of the right is to choose one. Calling him both a fascist and socialist is, I paraphrase TheAmazingAtheist, "like looking at a triangle and calling it both a circle and a square". Both advocate different forms of government from each other, different economic and social structures, social and foreign policies. Socialism is based on class struggle, worker ownership of the means of production, secularism and the want of economic equality. Fascism is based on a nationalistic view of the homeland, maintaining social conservatism and serving the wealthy and corporations via a dictatorial military government whilst misleading it's public into believing that it is doing this for the worker. I could make a full blog post on the differences, but that's for another time.
Obama is neither of these. He is a capitalist. Not a free market capitalist, for sure, but a capitalist nonetheless. He advocates private ownership of the means of production and the profit motive. BHO has never supported the idea of class war, economic equality, a welfare state or revolution. Though you may consider proposing universal healthcare a socialist ideal. Well, it is, but so is having a public fire department, public police, public roads, public libraries, publicly funded disease research centers, etc. What about "redistribution of wealth"? Well, go to the link and read away my friend. Fascism as anywhere near Obama's ideals is more substantial than calling him a socialist, but is still wrong. There are no correlations, apart form the corporatism and general tenedencies which has plagued the USA government for years. To quote George Carlin, "Germany lost the second world war, fascism won it...".
On the issue of rights and freedoms. Could you on the right be more specific as to what rights and freedoms have been taken away from you? I mean, aside from those Bush took away. Remember how you said nothing about that? Well, unless we on the left spoke out, then you told us to shut up and stop being un-American.
Obamacare:
- Illegal immigrants will be covered. That is false. Although it would save tax payers money if illegals were allowed to purchase public option insurance.
- Death Panels will be set up to decide if your child or grandparents will be put to death because they are not useful to society. That is false.
- It is a government takeover. No, it is a Public Option, note the word option, to expand competition and lower costs. It will increase care given to you by making it illegal to deny you because of preexisting conditions.
- Abortions will be funded by taxpayers. False.
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To conclude, it is completely unhelpful to the development and progression of a nation to push lies and propaganda to the point that it disrupts logic and reason. Obama is neither a socialist or fascist. He is an American, Christian, capitalist and he is not gonna kill your grand mama. All of you who still believe in these fallacies propagated from FOX News and Talk-radio, I hope you enjoy being an imbecile.
These are some of my news sources, check them out if your sick of CNN, FOX, CBS and NBC.
http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://commondreams.org/
http://therealnews.com/t/
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.cbc.ca/
http://www.presstv.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.haaretz.com/
http://www.reuters.com/
http://associatedpress.com/
