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 Why ‘Socialism’ Evokes No FearPosted on Oct 11, 2007By Joe Conason Once among the most frightening epithets in American political culture, “socialized medicine” seems to have lost its juju. Today that phrase sounds awfully dated, like a song on a gramophone or a mother-in-law joke or a John Birch Society rant against fluoridated water. Yet despite that antique quality, the old buzzwords appear regularly in columns, press releases and speeches. Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican presidential pack run around squawking about socialism whenever anyone proposes health care reform. Syndicated columnist Robert Novak warns that the federally financed, state-run Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is essentially a socialist conspiracy. So does President Bush, who has vetoed a modest increase in that program’s funding because he doesn’t want to “federalize health care.” Although the Red threat still triggers an autonomic reaction among GOP true believers, the rest of the country no longer twitches to that high-pitched, far-right whistle. Most polls not only show enormous majorities favoring extension of coverage to every child, but substantial support for a radical change in how we pay and administer health insurance—including the possibility of a single-payer system. Why doesn’t the traditional propaganda work anymore? Perhaps the demise of the Soviet Union and the withering of communism in China have had a delayed effect on public attitudes here. Both the Russians and the Chinese have turned more capitalist than the West, abandoning their former systems without substituting modern protections. The ex-communists are more of a threat to the health of their own societies than to us. Most Americans may also have noticed that corporate bureaucracy and corruption, which figure largely in the present health care system, are not preferable to government bureaucracy. Doctors who used to wail about the dangers of Medicare have learned how unpleasant it is to deal with dozens of insurance companies, each creating different rules to cut costs and deny care. So have their patients. This corporate model is more expensive and less efficient than the government plans that provide care in every other industrialized nation. And most Americans may have learned by now that such systems prevail in Western countries that aren’t normally categorized as “socialist,” including the United Kingdom, Japan, Spain, Canada, Germany, France, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. All these nations manage to provide their citizens with high living standards, industrial and technological innovation, and broad political and economic freedom, even after 50 years of national health insurance. Meanwhile, the credibility of conservatives has diminished steadily. These days they cannot even achieve clarity on the meaning of their favorite cliches. For instance, the president hates “federalized health care,” but sponsors a Medicare prescription drug program that wastes hundreds of billions on drug companies and private insurers. Right-wing definitions no longer seem so clear, either. When the government awards a billion dollars in sweetheart mercenary contracts to a wealthy Republican family in Michigan, that’s “private enterprise.” But when the government helps a struggling middle-class family in Maryland send its children to the doctor, that’s creeping socialism. Conservative ideology’s declining relevance is again encouraging the politics of personal destruction. That must be why right-wing voices on the Internet, talk radio and the Fox News Channel have launched a nasty attack on the family of Graeme Frost, a 12-year-old Maryland boy who appeared in a Democratic radio commercial endorsing the SCHIP program. He and his younger sister, both victims of a terrible car accident that left the little girl with permanent brain damage, have both needed federal assistance because their parents were unable to afford private insurance. Certain conservative bloggers and pundits, seeking to prove that the Frost family is too affluent to qualify for SCHIP assistance, have harassed them, their neighbors and their co-workers. They have spread myths and lies about the family, their house and the schools that their children attend. And they have made repeated telephone calls to the Frost home, demanding answers to questions about their personal finances. It doesn’t seem to occur to any of these strict Christian moralists that the Frosts have enough trouble trying to care for their disabled daughter, or that the state of Maryland, under the SCHIP regulations, has determined that the Frost children are fully eligible for the help they obviously need. Let us not hear again from these mean-spirited people about “family values” or “compassionate conservatism.” Such is the devolution of conservatism in our time—from a philosophy concerned with overweening state authority to a movement that bullies children in the name of freedom. Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer. © 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc. Previous item: Let's Talk Baseball for a Change Next item: Listening to America's Black Middle Class Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.
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By Conservative Yankee, October 17, 2007 at 4:14 pm # 107829 by voice of truth on 10/17 at 2:25 pm “For those who love to quote history, do some research on the first year of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They tried socialism. They almost all died.” No, they tried communal living (slightly different than Communism, BUT surely not “socialism") and that is not why they almost all died. Massachusetts (later did try a form of “socialist” distribution of farm land and water supply, and the remains of that society are with Massachusetts today as one of four “Commonwealths” (Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia being the others) In Jamestown a Capitalist bastion, formed not to obtain religious freedom, but to obtain wealth from the new world...They all did die. Guess that history book you were quoting from left that out! Oh, and BTW “TRUTH” subjective.
By Paracelsus, October 16, 2007 at 3:10 pm # #107551 by voice of truth I think it is eminently fair to have a military use tax. A beggar would have very little to defend. If the nation were invaded his misery would be about the same. Now a man who owned vast acreage of producing land in the way mines, orchards, and cattle would logically want to send in enough money to buy his estate’s allotment of missiles, aircraft carriers and such. It is no different than a factotum in ancient Athens setting aside some of his wealth to buy a few triremes. I find it eminently logical, and if it can be granted that this is an obtuse argument, then the amusement alone over your annoyance is priceless.
By WR Curley, October 16, 2007 at 1:41 pm # Just briefly, here… First, thanks, Leefeller, you’re too kind. Second, VoiceofTruth (it is to laugh...come on now, suck it up and speak in your own name), I claimed no right and I followed corporate protocol to the letter. The point being - for those of you who missed it -that our uniquely American gordian knot of in-bred health care profiteers constitutes a beaurocratic, dictatorial nightmare way beyond the imagination of the most devious of rad-lib new New Dealers. Would I rather have a civil servant - performance monitored for how well I was served and protected - or a for-profit hireling - monitored for how well they protected and served the company margin - handling my case? Yeah, no fair. Rhetorical question. There are no natural rights. If we lived in nature, we’d all discover that one simple truth soon enough (read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road"). We live in society. We have no rights but those we write into law. When we have, as a legally recognized majority of the citizenry, agreed upon our rights, then we are entitled to claim those rights. If we write the right to universal health care into law...well, hey. There you are. I am continually astounded by the ease with which drive-time Rant Radio manages to ditto all these heads into voting against their own self interest. “Voice of Truth”, my bleedin’ arse. Yours for civil discourse, WR Curley
By WR Curley, October 16, 2007 at 7:36 am # “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics...” The prime rule governing all capitalist enterprise is to buy cheap and sell dear. The capitalist business of providing insurance against personal financial catastrophe due to personal medical catastrophe necessitates a bureacratic infrastructure designed precisely to deny benefits to the insured. It’s way cheaper, hence way more profitable, to hire people to comb for loopholes in contracts than it is to pay medical professionals to cure the contractee. And it’s far cheaper to find the cheapest medical providers rather than the best qualified. The “market” breaks down here. I worked for a while with Lowe’s Home Improvement, a monster corporation. I strained a wrist hefting some product. I kept hearing and feeling this nasty rasping sound in the afflicted region, so I thought an x-ray might be indicated. This simple request involved an interview with HR, a drug test, an interview with a company mandated health provider, filling out two forms and a disclaimer, a two hour wait in a clinic run like an animal shelter, the x-ray procedure itself (negative), a follow-up interview with the mandated provider, and subsequent hostile telephone interviews with three separate sub-contractors whose job it was to warantee Lowe’s against any legal action I might be contemplating. It is said that Medicare operates with about 2% overhead, and that the “market” alternative enjoys a hefty 30% cut for administrative cost. You can take that to the bank, folks. WR Curley
By Inherit The Wind, October 13, 2007 at 7:47 pm # 1) Compulsory mass medication is medically evil, as well as socialistic. It is starkly clear that one key to any medication is control of the dose; different people, at different stages of risk, need individual dosages tailored to their needs. And yet with water compulsorily fluoridated, the dose applies to everyone, and is necessarily proportionate to the amount of water one drinks. What is the medical justification for a guy who drinks ten glasses of water a day receiving ten times the fluorine dose of a guy who drinks only one glass? The whole process is monstrous as well as idiotic. (2) Adults, in fact children over nine, get no benefits from their compulsory medication, yet they imbibe fluorides proportionately to their water intake. (3) Studies have shown that while kids 5 to 9 may have their cavities reduced by fluoridation, said kids ages 9 to 12 have more cavities, so that after 12 the cavity benefits disappear. So that, at best, the question boils down to: are we to subject ourselves to the possible dangers of fluoridation solely to save dentists the irritation of dealing with squirming kids aged 5 to 9? (4) Any parents who want to give their kids the dubious benefits of fluoridation can do so individually: by giving their kids fluoride pills, with doses regulated instead of haphazardly proportionate to the kids’ thirst; and/or, as we all know, they can brush their teeth with fluoride-added toothpaste. How about freedom of individual choice? (5) Let us not omit the long-suffering taxpayer, who has to pay for the hundreds of thousands of tons of fluorides poured into the nation’s socialized water supply every year. The days of private water companies, once flourishing in the U.S., are long gone, although the market, in recent years, has popped up in the form of increasingly popular private bottled water even though far more expensive than socialized free water. What is it about Truthdig that brings out the loonies? 1) Evil? I guess you don’t remember how polio in America was SMASHED by enforced dosing of all school-age children with polio vaccine. Or the forced small-pox vaccination--small-pox is now considered TOTALLY eliminated in the world. When it comes to public health and communicable diseases, the government has not only the right but the OBLIGATION to protect the public. 2) Where the fuck did you get THIS garbage statistic? I turned 9 in 1964 and I GUARANTEE you far fewer kids in the 9-13 age group have cavities than did kids in 1964. EVERY kid I knew had cavities (I was a rarity--not having one till I was 12). Nowadays, kids with cavities are a rarity--DIRECTLY attributable to fluoridation. Healthy teeth are a critical factor to a healthy life. 3) Again, where did you get THIS garbage stat? Ask any dentist, and they’ll tell you that you are full of it. 4) Freedom of choice? Like not adding chlorine to the water so you can “choose” to drink unchlorinated water. Yeah, there’s a chance of cancer from chlorine. But the chances of cholera, typhus, typhoid and other water-born diseases LITERALLY are 100x as deadly (will kill 100 people for every chlorine cancer death)as chlorine. The anti-chlorine forces got their way in Paraguay--with DISASTROUS results. 5) The tax payer saves VAST amounts of money through the increase in public health--far more than the fluoridation costs. Since you don’t believe it works, of course, you don’t believe it saves money. But if it does work (and it does) it saves VAST amounts of money. Again, I use the chlorination of water as a more powerful example.
By Juba, October 13, 2007 at 2:24 pm # “United Kingdom, Japan, Spain, Canada, Germany, France, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. All these nations manage to provide their citizens with high living standards, industrial and technological innovation, and broad political and economic freedom, even after 50 years of national health insurance.” Until even educated American (like the author of the above article) stop falling into the trap of calling ‘national health care’, ‘national health INSURANCE’, we can be sure that both the insurance industry, and the mindset that allowed it to become entrenched in our lives, will remain to cloud the issue. Health Care in the countries mentioned above has absolutely nothing to do with INSURANCE. If the US is going to have any chance of entering the 21st century and joining the rest of the industrialized world in giving its citizens access to health care, the insurance industry and the mindset that spawned the phrase ‘national health insurance’ cannot be a part of the debate.
By Daniel Barker, October 12, 2007 at 8:23 pm # Not only do I agree with you, you have copied what I wrote. I have been writing that in a free society no military contractor can engage in business, such as in Iraq, without bidding. I am a conservative, and you do not realize that more and more conservatievs are leaving the Republican Party each day. We conservatives beleive in the free-market system - for everyone. We believe that the Republican Party bestows tax incentives for select corporations - in other words campaign donors - which is not a free-market system. We oppose tax subsidies. Let each business fend for itself. Leftists argue that corporations produce wealth, and they are right. The answer is to let every citizen of the world become their own corporation, and we would be a lot happier. |
Newsroom Carnage Continues at The Washington Post
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