Why "socialism" doesn't scare anyone anymore
- From: "Joe S." <noone@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:10:36 -0400
QUOTE
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.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071011_why_socialism_evokes_no_fear/
END QUOTE
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