[](/sites/default/files/uploads/2013/07/Obama-Karl-Marx1.jpg)Having gone over, in Part One, how far President Obama has gone to implement the first five of Marx’s ten points for how to convert a society to socialism, let’s pick up the narrative by reviewing the other five points.
#6. State control of means of communication and transportation.
Team Obama has attempted to cow conservative media outlets like Fox News into submission through denunciation, has suggested reviving the so-called “fairness doctrine,” and has expressed hostility toward free speech, seeking to use regulations to shape and limit the public. In the area of transportation, Obama insinuated government into the auto industry, has favored the high-speed rail boondoggle, and wishes he could compel us all to convert to “green transportation,” such as electric cars and biofuels.
#7. Increase state control over means of production.
Besides increasing government control of financial institutions (including having virtually nationalized the mortgage industry by taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) Obama has moved to centralize control of health care and insurance; has dictated policies, and even hand-picked a CEO, of American automobile companies; and has done his best to increase government power over the energy industry through his green energy subsidies, his failed cap-and-trade scheme, and via EPA regulation.
#8 Establishment of workers’ armies.
Obama has ramped up the number of Americans working for Uncle Sam by securing a large expansion of Americorps and winning passage of his Serve America Act. He also has done everything he could to strengthen labor unions.
#9. Control over where people live.
Under Obama, The Department of Housing and Urban Development has launched a plan to change where some people live to achieve an indefinite goal of a more even racial distribution of the population.[1]
One of the implications of cap & trade or other attempts by Obama to regulate how much carbon dioxide Americans emit via fossil fuel consumption is the prospect of government limiting human mobility by raising the cost (even to the extent of imposing financial penalties) for exceeding government-determined limits on how far a person may travel.
In Brian Sussman’s book, Eco-Tyranny, you can read an executive order that Obama signed on October 5, 2009 that would “divide the country into sectors where all humans would be herded into urban hubs” while most of the land would be “returned to a natural state upon which humans would only be allowed to tread lightly.” (Marx wanted more equal distribution of the human population between town and country, whereas Obama favors urban concentration, but both want to control where people live.)
#10. Education for all children in public (i.e, governmentally controlled) schools.
Marx’s tenth point is the most far-reaching and potentially dangerous of all. It’s target—control over how and what people think—is the ultimate tyranny. That is why every communist state uses schools as institutions of indoctrination, just as they use media outlets as instruments of propaganda. That is why George Orwell featured “Newspeak”—the mutilation of truth and reason by distorting the meanings of concepts. Every illiberal regime seeks to impose mental programming that produces “the new Soviet man.”
Obama has done more than any previous president to centralize control over education in Washington. He has essentially nationalized the student loan market.[2] He has repeatedly tried to limit school choice, instead siding with would-be teachers’ union monopolists.
In his 2012 State of the Union address, which I attended, he called for additional funds for new federal education programs, including mandatory nationwide schooling for everyone up to age eighteen, regardless of aptitude, interest, or willingness.
Obama has sought to extend the tentacles of federal control over how state education policies by arbitrarily granting waivers exempting some states from George W. Bush’s misguided No Child Left Behind Act. In doing so, Obama has trampled on the principle of federalism and most assuredly granted waivers with strings attached, thereby reducing states’ independence.
Most recently, Team Obama has been pushing the Common Core State Standards—a follow-up to his “Race to the Top” program that spent over $4 billion to induce states to switch to federal standards for curricular guidelines. While Race to the Top and Common Core may sound innocuous or even reasonable, the actual effects are deleterious. Both programs essentially bribe states to replace their existing standards with federal standards, even though, as California has found out, states have had to “dumb down” their standards to conform to federal standards that are lower. [3]
More ominously, the Obama administration is using the Common Core program to invade privacy (think NSA, IRS, and the CFPB – see Part One of this article). In 2011, the Department of Education unilaterally, without congressional approval, altered the regulations based on the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974—loosening them so that mounds of personal data about students may be collected. The personal data include not just academic records, such as grades and whether students complete homework assignments, but also disciplinary records, Social Security numbers, records of discussions with school counselors, as well as information about families’ voting status, religious affiliations, medical history, and income.
As the obnoxious cable TV commercials say, “But wait, there’s more!” If that isn’t invasive enough, the intrepid Michelle Malkin has reported that Team Obama’s Department of Education is preparing to use the most advanced technologies (e.g., cameras to judge facial expressions, electronic seats that report posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse, biometric wraps on wrists, etc.) to assess a wide variety of student attitudes—“appreciation for diversity,” “empathy,” “bias,” “cultural awareness,” etc.[4]
You can imagine the mischief to which such data-mining could be put—a “brave new world” in which the government uses the data collected in schools to single out “right thinkers” for the fast track to the best schools and key government positions, and putting dissidents from the desired orthodoxy on black lists. You can see the totalitarian potential of such data mining performed under the pretext of “education.” Surely Comrade Marx would commend Barack Obama for his diligent efforts in the field of education.
The bottom line in all of this is that if Barack Obama is not an economic Marxist at heart, he is doing a superb imitation of one. The fact that he enjoys such unflagging support for his agenda from a significant part of the population shows just how far our country has gone in forsaking our founding principles for the siren song of socialism.
Notes:
[1] “HUD Launches Scheme To Racially Diversify Suburbs,” IBD Editorials, posted 07/22/2013 06:55 PM ET.
[2] Andrew Clark, “”Obama’s Risky Plan: Government Takeover of the Student Loan Business,” Politics Daily, January 26, 2010; www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/26/obamas-risky-plan-takeover-of-the-stude…
[3] Mytheos Holt, “New Whiteboard Video Attacks ‘Obama’s Education Takeover,’” theblaze, Feb. 17, 2012; www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/02/17/new-whiteboard-video-attacks-obamas-education-takeover/
[4] Michelle Malkin, “Time To Opt Out of Creepy Fed Ed Data-Mining Racket,” Accuracy In Media guest column, posted March 18, 2013 @ 2:50 am; http://www.aim.org/guest-column/time-to-opt-out-of-creepy-fed-ed-data-mining-racket/
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