The President's 'Doctrine of Socialism'

Man, that Glenn Beck is something, isn’t he? Can you believe he actually called the president a socialist?

[The president] has now thought out and matured his doctrine of Socialism. It is not the Marxian Socialism. . . [the president] achieves the redistribution of wealth in a simpler and easier way. He leaves the land, the mines, the factories, the railroads, the banks–all the instruments of production and exchange–in the hands of their individual owners, but of the profits of their operation he takes whatever share the people at any given time may choose to appropriate to the common use. The people are going to say, We care not who owns and milks the cow, so long as we get our fill of the milk and cream. Marx left Socialism in its infancy, a doctrine that stumbled and sprawled under the weight of its own inconsistencies. [The president’s] doctrine is of no such complexity. It has all the simplicity of theft and much of its impudence.

Oh sorry, that was the New York Times discussing Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 — found via Steve Hayward at Power Line, who’s having lots of fun reopening the left’s memory hole from long ago in a continuing series there.