Resolved: Barack Obama is not a Socialist

Definition of Socialist:A person who advocates or practices SocialismObservation 1: I do not have to prove that the United States has a Socialist economy in order to win this debate, because the resolution states that the subject is Barack Obama, not the US. Observation 2: Since a Socialist is someone who advocates or practices socialism, if Barack Obama is not proven to be completely barren of socialist inclinations or completely without a history of advocating socialist policies, Con automatically wins the debate. Obama is a Socialist. Obama has maintained, and actually helped strengthen, the Socialist institutions of Previous United States presidents. By doing nothing to shut down or even to diminish the power of these Socialist institutions, he is implicitly advocating the institutions by making a Socialist decision in the continuance of them. He hasn’t eliminated the minimum wage, a socialist policy of centrally-planned and market socialism. He has done nothing to decrease spending as a percentage of GDP, which has increased tremendously under his leadership. The dramatic increase in government spending is in part due to another Socialist institution that has plagued the United States for almost a Century: The Federal Reserve Bank and the System in which it operates. A central bank is a socialist institution that seeks to influence the market artificially, the opposite of capitalism. A central bank is actually a fundamental plank of Communism. Obama has met with Ben Bernanke many times and has asked for advice in issues of macroeconomic policy and other policies. Obama has continued Medicare and Medicaid, and his PPACA (Obamacare) plan is moving the United States closer and closer to socialism. He maintained the nationalization of the banking and mortgage industries that occurred several months before he took office. He supports public schools on the federal level: another plank of Communism. Public schools are just another example of socialist economics in the United States. The fact that water and electric utilities are government subsidized coercive monopolies just exacerbates this far left economic system, no opposition from Obama there. Obama has stood silent against public goods and common ownership of items from roads to bridges to libraries to several corporations. The federal income tax, the estate tax, and the FCC are all socialist institutions which Obama has done little to decrease the power. Obama is moving the United States toward Socialism on the economic sliding scale. I will concede that the institutions of a country and its people and values cannot change commensurate and consonant with a leader’s will. However, Obama is fighting arduously to bring us closer to Socialism, so much so that we are already beginning to imitate European Nations, notwithstanding that the US government fulfills the ten planks of communism to varying degrees and sometimes almost in uncanny ways. Obama authorized the federal stimulus bill through the federal reserve, authorized quantitative easing (so far two rounds have been done) over the amount of a trillion dollars, and is the chief proponent of his Jobs bill which would artificially raise employment and increase federal spending. Obama is proposing a greater tax on the rich which is a socialist ideological principle: tax the rich to feed the poor, all the while getting closer to wealth equality. The numbers clearly suggest that the United States under Barack Obama is moving in a more socialist direction and that we are beginning to resemble many European countries. Obama has lengthened the time that people can collect unemployment insurance. Almost every shread of evidence not only suggests that he is a socialist, but that he is directly advocating, practicing, and enacting socialist policies based on his European instincts of socialism. I will rebut your claims and rebuild my case in the next round. I wish you good luck. Thank you.