The First Red Scare
Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Thousands of years ago the ancients realized that the same drug can either cure or kill. Indeed, our word pharmacy, where drugs are dispensed, comes from the ancient Greek word “pharmakon” which is usually translated as drug but which can mean either “remedy” or “poison” depending on context (1).

This preface is necessary to explain the title. I have received a few emails and comments criticizing my decision to vote for Obama (see my article President Barack H. Obama will make me Rich) on my belief that in the short term his socialist policies would be good for gold (and make me richer in the process), and that in the long term his incompetent reliance on socialism would bring this country to the brink of collapse and teach Americans never to vote for any socialist moron ever again.

In this regard I believe Obama is a “pharmakon,” that is, he is both the poison and the cure - his policies will poison our economic system to near destruction thereby necessitating the cure for his failures: Capitalism.

Our country has been exposed to creeping socialism since the 1850s. Only certain catastrophic events put their numbers into decline: the First Red Scare, from 1919 to 1921, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957.

But every generation or so the socialists come back when memory fades. Young people today need to see the utter failure that can be brought to an economy by socialism. Without Obama we will endure more and more governmental controls on society. Hopefully Obama will put a stop to that. Only Obama can give this country a good and ugly dose of socialism.