A Center-Right God-Fearing Socialist State?

Newsweek tracked Republican chatter recently over how President Obama’s stimulus bill could push the United States further down the slippery slope toward socialism.

Despite a rather loose use of the term “socialism” as it is traditionally defined, it’s interesting that opponents of government spending equate Obama’s bill with European-style governance. In fact, government got bigger under the previous administration with public spending as a percent of GDP coming up only 8% shy the EU average. And many would say, without health care except for the impoverished or the dying or anything approaching sustainable infrastructure in many parts of the country, that the fruits of that spending are hard to make out, at least as socialism.