– by Tibor Machan

Dr. Tibor Machan

Mr. Milos Foreman is a renowned film director but not a good political economist. This is evident in his New York Times op-ed defense of Barack Obama from those who charge the president with being a socialist. (See his essay, "Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close" in the July 10th issue of the paper.)
When someone on the American political landscape is accused of being a socialist, the claim has little directly to do with Stalinism and a lot more with the kind of system they had in Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and other Soviet colonies, namely the phony promise of cradle-to-grave security and relentless government meddling in people's lives (goulash communism). Call it Norman Thomas style socialism, the kind that so many academic socialists in the West champion.