Commentary
By
Frances Rice
Liberal pundits were giddy when the hard-core socialist, Barack Obama, was elected president in 2008 and remained silent when Newsweek published an edition of its magazine in 2009 with the below cover.
Fast forward to 2016 to the media-generated firestorm where pundits
are trying to turn the public against Donald Trump, a capitalist, by falsely comparing Trump to Adolph Hitler, who was a socialist.
The
absurdity of the “Trump is like Hitler” narrative is addressed in the article “Leftists
become incandescent when reminded of the socialist roots of Nazism” that’s posted
at:
http://blackrepublican.blogspot.com/2015/05/leftists-become-incandescent-when.html
Flashback to
2009, David Leonhardt brazenly and approvingly compared President Obama to Hitler in
an article published in The New York Times. So, what was the liberal media's reaction? Silence.
Below
is a 2009 article by Warner Todd Huston posted by News Busters on the subject and further below is the
text of Leonhard’s article.
_________________
By
Warner Todd Huston| April 3, 2009
For
The New York Times economic scene section for March 31, David Leonhardt came
across with one of the most amazing admissions about Obama that I've ever seen
in the Times. Namely that Barack
Obama is just like Hitler. Now, many of you may be solemnly shaking your
head in agreement, but in so doing you would be missing why the Times was
comparing Obama to Hitler. You see, Leonhardt didn't mean it as an insult. He
was saying that it was a good thing that Barack was being like Hitler at least
in an economic sense.
Here
Leonhardt is taking the trains-on-time track with his Hitler angle by saying
that, despite that whole Holocaust and World War II business, Hitler's policies
were good for Germany. So good, in fact, that he celebrates the ways he sees
that Obama is emulating the mustachioed mad-man's economic prescriptions with
the massive takeover of the economy and bloated government spending on
"stimulus."
You
know the left has lost it when they are invoking the "success" of
Hitler to prop up The One!
If
I might rephrase Leonhardt's opening sentence a bit: "Every so often, the
left serves up an analogy that’s uncomfortable, a little distracting and yet
still very telling."
The
telling thing here is that Leonhardt is willing to ignore the ultimate outcome
of Hitler's policies so that he might justify the destruction of the capitalist
system, elimination of personal property rights, and to excuse away giving
dictatorial power to an all encompassing government juggernaut here in the US.
He so dearly wants the Keynesian theory to be the right one that he is willing
to turn his face from genocide and world war to prove his wishes beneficial to
man.
Here
is how he sets up his absurd take on history:
More
than any other country, Germany -- Nazi Germany -- then set out on a serious
stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn,
put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi
Party across Munich and Berlin.
Oh,
sure Germany became a powerhouse previous to the outbreak of WWII. But, what
Leonhardt criminally ignores is that Hitler made Germany a powerhouse by
stealing the personal property and wealth of minorities and business owners
alike and remanding them to the state. And then, to sustain this wild growth,
he launched a war of greed and acquisition on his neighbors that added to that
power but cost the lives of millions. Germany built this empire on the
destruction of God-given rights, oppression of religious and ethnic minorities,
and widespread death and war.
In
light of the final outcome, I'd wager that this Hitlarian bargain doesn't seem
very appealing to anyone but Leonhardt.
From
here, Leonhardt segues into an appreciation of the policies of the most
communist of presidents we've ever had, Franklin Roosevelt. Leonhardt rehashes
New Deal apology by claiming that FDR's economic plans helped the USA out of
The Great Depression. He says it all proves that, "Yes, stimulus
works."
Of
course, like many who admire FDR, Leonhardt glosses over the fact that none of
FDR's policies worked at all until the gearing up for war began. He also
ignores the unsustainability of Germany's economic "benefits" that
dictated that it must go to war to expand the pool of wealth from which the
state could steal to support its wild growth. In fact, that same war aim that
helped FDR's economic outlook was also unsustainable to the point that the
singular goal was, indeed, war. At some point, it must be realized, the war
will end and one faces either destruction -- whether mutual or exclusive -- or
at the very least will discover a cessation of the activity involved in the run
up to war and hence the economic "stimulus" that it entails. Leaving?
Leaving an empty hole where that artificial war stimulus was and no stable
economic activity to fill it.
In
fact, the main reason that the US came out of WWII so strong wasn't because we
had spent ourselves to prosperity by gearing for war, but because afterward we
became the supply house and construction company of the civilized world by
helping re-build the many nations devastated by that war.
A
little further in the piece, we realize just how benighted Leonhardt's
understanding of things economic is when he favorably quotes George Soros, a
man that has admitted that his singular goal isn't to improve the economy, but
to destroy it in order to remake the world in his own image.
George
Soros, the billionaire investor who was born in Budapest and works in New York,
came to Washington last week and captured both the problem and the potential
for a solution. “I think they can be brought around,” he said of the Europeans.
“I am actually hopeful something constructive can happen.”
Leonhardt's
got to be kidding, right? This from a man that said that the world's economic
collapse was "the
culminating point of my life’s work"?
Leonhardt's
Soros quote could certainly have been uttered by Hitler himself because there
is no elucidation of the moral theme behind what being "hopeful" that
"something constructive can happen" means. Like Hitler, what Soros
means by "constructive" would NOT be an outcome that any humane
person would agree is so wonderful! Yet, from Leonhardt's treatment we have to
assume that he imagines that Soros' "constructive" must obviously be
a mutually beneficial good for us all. Leonhardt truly does not understand
Soros' apocalyptic point.
Anyway,
Leonhardt's ridiculous exposition on the benefits of the socialist model is
replete with so many misunderstanding of history, so many bald faced denials of
truth that it boggles the mind.
But,
it was interesting to see a slavish Obamaite trying to assure us of how
wonderful The One is by favorably comparing him to Hitler. I laughed right
before I threw up a little in my mouth over the reality of it all.
__________________
Stimulus Thinking, and Nuance
By David Leonhardt | MARCH 31, 2009
In the summer of 1933, just as they will do on Thursday,
heads of government and their finance ministers met in London to talk about a
global economic crisis. They accomplished little and went home to battle the crisis
in their own ways.
More than any other country, Germany — Nazi Germany —
then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the
military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics
and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.
The economic benefits of this vast works program never
flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn’t look kindly on collective
bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great
Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and
unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn’t become
widespread until later). Harold
James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists
studying under John Maynard Keynes in the
1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.
No sane person enjoys mixing nuance and Nazis, but this
bit of economic history has a particular importance this week. In the run-up to
the G-20 meeting, European leaders
have resisted calls for more government spending. Last week, the European Union president,
Mirek Topolanek, echoed a line from AC/DC — whom he had just heard in concert
— and described the Obama administration’s stimulus plan as “a road to
hell.”
Here in the United States, many people are understandably
wondering whether the $800 billion stimulus program will make much of a
difference. They want to know: Does stimulus work? Fortunately, this is one
economic question that’s been answered pretty clearly in the last century.
Yes, stimulus works.
When governments have taken aggressive steps to soften an
economic decline, they have succeeded. The Germans did it in the 1930s. Franklin D. Roosevelt
did so more haltingly, and had more halting results. Even the limp Japanese
recovery plan of the 1990s makes the case. Although dithering over a bank
rescue kept Japan in a slump, government spending on roads and bridges made
things better than they otherwise would have been.
No matter what happens in London on Thursday, President Obama and other world
leaders are sure to claim the meeting as a success. (“I do not regard the
economic conference as a failure,” Roosevelt said in 1933.)
But if the meeting is going to be an actual success, it
will have to do more than put a happy face on trans-Atlantic disagreements. It
will need to begin nudging the discussion about stimulus toward a more accurate
reading of history.
The Americans and Europeans aren’t really as far apart as
Mr. Topolanek’s AC/DC homage suggests. Europe is doing less than the
United States, but the gap isn’t huge. It just seems so because European
stimulus tends to arrive quietly, from existing safety net
programs. In this country, where the safety net is weaker, stimulus comes
largely from new laws.
Yet the rhetoric from Europe — even the more subdued
recent remarks, like those
of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany — still creates a problem. Stimulus
skepticism today will make it harder to pass more stimulus tomorrow. And more
will probably be needed.
George Soros, the billionaire investor who was born in
Budapest and works in New York, came to Washington last week and captured both
the problem and the potential for a solution. “I think they can be brought
around,” he said of the Europeans. “I am actually hopeful something
constructive can happen.”
Photo: The French delegation to the global economic
conference in London in 1933 during the Depression. Little came of the meeting,
which adjourned in six weeks with no major agreements. Credit Associated Press
•The objections to stimulus tend to come in two forms: Its
costs are too high, and its benefits too small.
Mr. Topolanek and German officials have been pressing the
first argument. They say that the additional government spending can lead to
inflation and government debt. The Weimar Republic of the 1920s, where
inflation helped lead to Hitler’s rise, casts a long shadow.
Stimulus opponents here in the United States — mainly
Congressional Republicans (though not, tellingly, Republican governors of some
large states) — have been warning about debt, too. But they have also been
making the second argument. When the government spends money, they say, it
simply displaces spending by the private sector. Republicans on Capitol Hill
have taken to citing a recent book by the journalist Amity Shlaes, “The
Forgotten Man,” which claims the New Deal didn’t work.
Theoretically, neither of these arguments is crazy. But
they don’t have much evidence on their side.
The best takedown of Ms. Shlaes’s
thesis came from Eric Rauchway, a historian, who pointed out that her favorite
statistic did not count people employed by New Deal programs to be employed. Excluding
the effects of the medicine, the patient is as sick as ever!
When Roosevelt stuck to a stimulus program, unemployment
fell markedly, and the biggest stimulus of all — World War II — did the rest.
It’s true that economic models say the economy shouldn’t work this way. When
resources are sitting idle, businesses should find a way to use them profitably.
But they often don’t.
People become irrationally pessimistic during a downturn.
They are driven by what Keynes called animal spirits. Only government can
typically change the dynamic.
Could the government spending eventually lead to
inflation and crippling debts? Absolutely. But the mistakes of the last 80
years have gone in the other direction. During the Great Depression, Japan’s
lost decade, the Asian financial crisis and even the last 18 months,
governments didn’t act aggressively enough. Deflation and lack of growth ended
up being the real risks.
These are precisely the risks facing the world economy
now. In Spain, prices are already falling. Layoffs are still mounting around
the world. Financial firms have more losses to acknowledge.
Given the diminished standing of the United States, Mr.
Obama won’t be able to get the Europeans to fall in line behind him this week.
But he can still make progress. He and the American delegation can, in gentle
terms, ask the Europeans to live up to their own standard — and remind them of
their self-interest.
Two weeks ago, responding to criticism,
an executive of the European Central Bank wrote a letter to an Italian
newspaper claiming,
“fiscal stimulus in European countries is wholly comparable to that seen in the
United States.” That simply isn’t true, as the chart at right makes clear. The
difference amounts to about $200 billion over three years.
Because the global economy is in many ways integrated,
Europe can benefit from American stimulus without pulling its own weight. But
because the global economy isn’t completely integrated, European stimulus would
still help Europe more than anywhere else. And that presents the American
delegation with perhaps its most persuasive case.
Right now, Eastern Europe appears to be one of the
world’s most vulnerable places. It is a relatively poor region, where the
population is disaffected
and where the economy is shrinking rapidly. In both Estonia and Latvia, the
gross domestic product fell 10 percent last year.
At the G-20, the leaders of the richer European countries
will be asking the world to help Eastern Europe. By all means, the world should
help. But Europe should reconsider its part, too.
