Opinion: Rush Limbaugh orders a change in metaphors

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If critics of Obamanomics won’t listen to the Opinion Manufacturing Division, perhaps they’ll listen to Rush Limbaugh. It’s just not socialism, people!

According to the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America, El Rushbo declared on his program today, ‘We’ve gotta stop calling it socialism, folks, ‘cause socialism’s lost its bite, and what he’s doing is really not socialism anyway. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production.’ (Italics added by me.) He goes on to say -- and this is the part featured on the RushLimbaugh.com homepage today -- ‘Fascism is where politicians run it, but it’s privately owned. We are fascists. Obama has turned this into a fascist nation -- think Mussolini.’ (Actually, the site’s version of the quote is a little different: ‘Fascism is where the private sector still owns what it owns, but the politicians run it -- and fascism is exactly what we’re getting under Barack Obama.’)

There you have it. We can now proceed to having a rational discussion of whether Obamanomics and its ever-growing deficits amount to fascism (as defined by Rush, Jonah Goldberg or Il Duce himself), Keynesian economics or simple tax-and-spend liberalism.

-- Jon Healey