— Which in turn must have Rick Moran — who excoriated we Visigoths for calling such a mindset Marxist — rushing to Wikipedia to find out how “wealth redistribution” by force of government dictate differs significantly from socialism or even communism, save for the obvious fact that those who promote it have no desire to reach that final phase of the worker’s utopia, where the government fades away and all men are equal.  Which would look a lot like North Korea without the jackbooted policing powers and the mad despot running shit.

Instead, such socialist visionaries — or, in Moran’s telling, garden variety liberal Democrats — seem always to stop right at the point of liberal fascism, where government and big business combine their interests, consolidate their power, destroy competition, kill off the middle class, and re-work society back into what they believe should be it’s natural order:  they get to rule, being the best and the most deserving, and the masses serve as their economic units and the subsidizers of a lifestyle the ruling elite deserve for all the hard work of herding and caring for such pack animals.

Chris Stirewalt:

President Obamatoday heads to the liberal Center for American Progress to talk about ObamaCare and the economy. And while the president will certainly hit talking points about how Americans, one day freed of concerns over health insurance, can pursue their dreams of higher education and economic betterment, the basic message is likely to be the same one he has made in his other “major” economic addresses over the years: the need for more redistribution of wealth to deal with income inequality. Remember that while the redistributive properties of ObamaCare are causing mainstream Americans to recoil from the president and his health law, redistribution is its cardinal virtue to many on the left.

[…]

Obama has pursued his policy aims with dogged persistency since taking office and has made no secret of his central aim of shifting wealth. The surprise from many reporters at seeing millions of health insurance policies vaporized and in seeing premiums for those already covered leap astronomically indicates either massive inattention or a facile response to a story they can no longer ignore. Obama’s law turns insurance companies into vehicles for redistribution: heavily regulated, highly protected public utilities with a social-engineering mission. The fact that Obama is emphasizing this point now suggests he knows just how bad the days ahead will be for his law and his party. By hardening the resolve of the third of Americans standing with him on ObamaCare, Obama hopes to make good on his promise to have the law go into effect despite massive opposition and survive at least until the end of his term.

Obama’s aim — following the blueprint of Alinsky — has been to pretend to champion the middle class while working on policies that will ultimately destroy it.  But without “wealth inequality” there can be no liberty, because radical egalitarianism calls for the crushing of liberty and the policing of conformity.  As Milton Friedman once noted, “The heart of the [classically] liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights …This implies a belief in the equality of man in one sense; in their inequality in another.”

Obama doesn’t want wealth equality. He wants a ruling class and those who are ruled over — with those who are ruled over dependent on government, and forever in its service. The American Dream has always allowed for an escape from settled social “class” divisions. It has created the kind of wealth and opportunity that, because it is so dispersed, has made it difficult for those interested in centralizing power to convince us that centralizing power is what is needed to promote “fairness.”

In the heart of every leftist true believer beats the heart of a fascist, an authoritarian, a despot, a tyrant.

And though the media — including those on the right who wished to show themselves nuanced, above the fray, and distinct from the yelping yahoos who saw Obama as some sort of dangerous interloper to the representative republican system of governance — worked hard to ignore the warning signs about who this man really was, and what his aims really were.

And yet we’re still, as an oppositional force to this attempted coup, listening to those same people who scoffed at our “extremism” and rewarded our prescience with marginalization.

Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Fortunately, the lesson will be even more dramatic when those who once refused to see who we were dealing with are forced to stand in line for their rationed serving.