Now can someone tell me why this isn't worrisome?
OK - Senator Obama will be the 44th President of the United States of America. While my vote went to the other guy, I certainly understand President-Elect Obama’s appeal and, frankly, I hope he is as wonderful as more than 62 million American’s think he is.
But, now that we’ve elected him and I can no longer be accused of partisainship - he is, after all, soon to be my President, too - can someone tell me why I shouldn’t be worried about his Socialist tendencies?
In an interview a while back, then state-Senator Obama said the following (the underlining is mine):
You know if you look at the victories and the failures of the Civil Rights movement and its litigation strategy in the Court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I would be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society…. And one of the I think the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that.
I’m not “reading into anything” am I? How does his suggested policy of “redistribution of wealth” (remember his comment about spreading around Joe the Plumber’s wealth?) not mean exactly what it sounds like?
Have we just elected a President who wants to redistribute wealth? Isn’t that a Socialist position? What am I missing?
