Topic: Liberal Fascism
The Spanish prime minister is coming to Washington, DC, which makes this a good time to have a look at one case of “real, existing socialism.” (Michael Moore, pay attention!)
Reelected just 18 months ago on a left-wing platform that would gladden the heart of the most worshipful Obama hymn-singer, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is not a happy camper nowadays. For despite the wonderfulness of his Euro-progressivism, Spain’s unemployment rate stands at 18%—and no, that is not a typo. When the books are closed on 2009, economists expect to record that the country’s GDP will be found to have contracted by 4%. But there’s one statistic that’s arrowing up: thanks to the Zapatero government’s profligate spending, Spain’s budget deficit is expected to reach 10% of GDP this year.
Zapatero has blamed Spain’s economic woes on “neocons” and “radical liberalism.” In sharp contrast to these sinister reactionaries, he has proposed an innovative response to the economic crisis: higher taxes. Good idea in the middle of a deep recession.
Incidentally, Zapatero is also a leading Greenshirt. The green energy initiative that he cobbled together has been cited by President Obama as a model for the United States. Yet somehow, green jobs have failed to arrest Spain’s precipitous economic decline, while the country remains Europe’s leading greenhouse gas emitter.
On the foreign policy front, Zapatero showed himself to be a good little soldier of progressivism by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq with days of his 2004 election. He followed up with a steady stream of anti-American rhetoric. All this earned him the lasting enmity of the Bush Administration, which spent the subsequent four years more or less ignoring Zapatero’s existence.
So needless to say, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero can expect a cordial welcome at the White House. In so many ways, he’s Barack Obama’s kind of guy.
(A tip of the hat to Soeren Kern, whose article in the Weekly Standard alerted me to Zapatero’s impending visit, and reviews his sorry record.)
