Mary Katharine Ham and Juan Williams are on the O’Reilly Factor right now. They were just discussing whether Barack Obama is a socialist or not.
I blogged about this for NRB back in August.
Obama is not a socialist. He’s a leftist. Here’s the metaphor and see if you follow: Socialist is to Baptist as Leftist is to Christian. (Sorry, Pastor Paul Cooper, not poking at you guys here!) “Socialism” is a subset of the Left the same as “Marxist,” “Communist,” “Progressive,” etc. are. Obama is basically a non-denominational, postmodern leftist.
It’s semantics and ultimately a point that’s not really worth arguing about too much. There are far more important issues we should be focusing on. Of course this is the O’Reilly Factor — home of Marc Lamont Hill, body language experts, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition coverage — so it’s not like my expectations are all that high.
