« Tom Ridge: At Least Some Color Terror Alerts Seemed Political
Happy Blogger Learns Meghan McCain Will Host Show He Never Watches »
US Health Care Reforms & Fear Of Socialism
Aug 21st, 2009 | 17 responses
Suzanne White, my favourite Chinese astrologer, is an American with a no-nonsense approach that’s a hallmark of her style even when she writes on non-astrology subjects. Here I am referring to her two posts: “Why Do Americans Fear Socialism?” and “Don’t Speechify. Teachify.”
White’s first post, and here it goes: “I don’t want to ‘become a socialist’ anymore than I want to ‘become a dentist.’ I am not a person who joins political parties. Labels restrict people.
“Why can’t Americans think outside their own system? Yes, they are isolated and yes, they are brainwashed—but mostly they are under-educated.
“America not only needs more socialism, it needs an education about what socialism is and what it can do for it. Socialism is not communism. No way. It’s a democratic method of improving the lifestyles of the people in a country so they can live productive lives.
“Socialism for the people is good for America. Obama is not a socialist. Nor am I. But we would both like to enhance the lifestyles of our fellow Americans by taking the best from the socialism we see working well in successful Social Democracies and injecting some of it into our current system which has quite simply ‘flunked out’.”
In her second post, White writes: “The current campaign for health care reform is a pedagogical disaster. We need to teach the public what the 1,000 page bill is about. And we need to do it simply and fast!
“We are both confused about and afraid of how health care reforms will affect our lives. We don’t have the time or the capacity to read a 1,000 page document written in complex lingo.
“The administration ought to hire a team of pedagogically-savvy folks who can sift through the 1,000 pages and synthesize the bill into ten or twelve short paragraphs.” More here…
opinions powered by SendLove.to
17 Responses to “US Health Care Reforms & Fear Of Socialism”
Socialism would be a disaster for the U.S. Socialism seems to work best in small, homgeneous, all-white countries that have little population growth and little population movement. Since the U.S. has none of those, Americans are correct to believe that most of them would be harmed by socialism. For all the claims of Democratic, it means that an elite few decide who the winners are and who the losers are. And most Americans know that they will be left in the loser category. See public schools versus private schools ro the college application process or private security versus municiple police to see how the middle class is screwed by socialism.
Superdestroyer, your post seems to suggest that racism is at the heart of many of America's problems. Is that what you mean?
The United States cannot be harmed by Socialism as we have practiced some of it successfully for many decades now. Unfortunately any discussion of a redistribution of wealth by any degree scares the hell out of the capitalist elite in this country whom are busily promoting Social-Darwinism for everybody but themselves. They have cultivated the idiot vote so well by waving the flag up people’s arses, that they now have a menacing degree of political clout. However I am confident that Americans will come to see this intellectually and morally bankrupt political philosophy for what it is and shy away from it. In fact we are seeing that change now. It is not so much that Americans are “uneducated” on the subject but rather that they have been intentionally “educated incorrectly” on the subject.
To demonstgrate the irony of proposed socialism, look at blacks in America. A group that was held down by the government for generations is the biggest supporters of socialist programs. Why? Because they feel that they will benefit from them while sticking others (read whites) with the costs. Middle class whites are the group most scared of socialism. Whites are the ones who were bussed across town for social engineering purposes. Whites are the ones who have to compete against quota blacks and Hispanics for educational, employment, and contracting opprotunities. Middle class whites have to compete against the prep school, Ivy educated elite whites for jobs and economic opportunities.
People realize that more socialism means more quotas, more social engineering, and more hypocrisy from elite whites. Middle class whites know that they will be the big losers in a socialist America. Just look at how middle class whites have had to evacuate cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, NYC due to socialist policies that the elite are good are avoiding.
If you want to make all of the U.S. like Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, etc, then go ahead of push the socialist agenda.
I'd say intelligent people fear socialism because the arguments advanced for it make no sense at all. They're laced with paranoia about “capitalist elite” conspiracies, totalitarian threats to eradicate extra curricular activities from schools, and brazen contradictions like “Public schools are failing/America needs more socialism.”
Who in his right mind would put incoherent people like this in charge of anything?
A group that was held down by the government for generations is the biggest supporters of socialist programs.
Yes, the Federal government lynched and pushed Jim Crow. Truman didn't desegregate the military. Eisenhower didn't send troops to Little Rock
Superdestroyer, your post seems to suggest that racism is at the heart of many of America's problems. Is that what you mean?
No SD just doesn't like blacks/minorities…
superdestroyer, as one of the those middle class white people, you don't speak for me. I don't feel victimized by racial minorities. Perhaps you need a little of that individual responsibility conservatives are always talking about instead of blaming your problems on black people.
Both capitalism and socialism are not pure states in practice – they are both on a sliding scale. We're a capitalist country, but not entirely! Our economy is mixed, and so are the economies of Canada and Europe. Americans act like anything even remotely socialist is going to turn us into the old Soviet Union. That's ridiculous – it hasn't happened to Canada or Europe, so why would it happen to us?
On a list of 100 Top Speeches of All Time I found one from the Smith Act Trial that was a real eye-opener. Note, I don't agree with all points made it's definitely worth reading:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/elizab… (#89, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn – Statement at the Smith Act Trial)
===
#41 is also worth reading but is not about economics at all, and written by a Republican. An excerpt:
“The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as “Communists” or “Fascists” by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”
Funny, it seems just as true today as it was in 1950. See:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/margar…
“I'd say intelligent people fear socialism because the arguments advanced for it make no sense at all.”
Kinda like the arguments we heard for unfettered capitalism last year. “If only there were less bank regulations, this recession would have never happened!”
Or how we should always lower taxes even though the government is up to its forehead in debt. Or how our pitiful safety nets are the real cause of poverty.
Chris, I was commenting on actual quotes from this page and one of the linked postings. They make no sense at all.
If you disagree, perhaps you could speak to those. Anonymous quotes pulled out of context from someplace else aren't relevant.
Dr J,
You made a generalization about “people” not liking socialism because of the “arguments” for it making no sense, so I threw some counter generalizations your way.
Btw, here is McCain arguing we should deregulate health insurance, the same thing he argued about the banks. Look to the stimulus debate, and both presidential campaigns last year, for arguments to lowering taxes.
“I'd say intelligent people fear socialism because the arguments advanced for it make no sense at all.”
And as that's not enough for some, there is also the record of sadly-typical results for people to see.
It's not limited to the USA, of course. Quite revealing is the record of, e.g., nationalization in the UK.
“Who in his right mind would put incoherent people like this in charge of anything?”
Democratic hard-core voters. They were accompanied by GOP rejectionists and the wavering in 2008.
“A group that was held down by the government for generations is the biggest supporters of socialist programs. Why?”
I am not a cultural determinist (saying that culture drives or explains everything, or nearly so) but in this case it's a complex issue that includes culture.
An enslaved population develops, arguably, a “slavery culture” (of the slaves), that includes an extreme amount of dependence (many slaves throughout history have been compliant) along with evasion of work and other responsibilities (that are compulsory and are notable for abuse related to their enforcement), and other moral disintegration and dimunition. The theory in the USA goes that with the advent of the modern welfare state (in the 1930s, when FDR and the Democrats also took pains anyway to give time and attention and respect to this group and to other “outsider” groups, often suffering from discrimination or oppression) and the first truly great growth of Washington (replacing constitutional federalism with a kind of government that better facilitated the New Deal, as its authors like Tugwell have freely admitted; they considered the Constitution and federalism to be obsolete as well as an encumbrance), that the federal government (and the Democratic Party) took over the role of “master” and perpetuated in large part the slave culture.
This can be considered to be modified in the 1960s with further ["]progress["] beyond the New Deal's “we will tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect” after the Civil Rights campaign by the Democrats during the Great Society to treat many black Americans in general also the way old, decrepit central-city governments corruptly treated their favored clientele even before the modern urban system progressed substantially since circa 1880. (New York and other cities were this way before that time.) What you saw with cities is cronyism and corruption and favoritism, and this was mirrored by the Dems in the 1960s with blacks and others with a nation-wide form of relationship similar to that by whatever special interest group or clique has current control of cities in places like New York (the state as well as the major city there), and its favored clientele or constituents (who are rewarded for their loyalty). It's a state of not only buying good will, but also buying peace (which can be said about efforts by the Dems after the race riots in the 1960s) as well as managing a long-loyal, large group (black Americans, though Hispanics have trended to approach and eventually surpass blacks and compete for #1 status someday), while exploiting it, with adjuncts and independent similar exploiters such as the Sixties-based old “black leadership,” some members of which are still here, today, buying loyalty with rewards (government benefits, political influence) while exploiting the group and at times taking it for granted, which occasionally results in temporary resentment.
(This is very modestly imitated by a much weaker GOP with a much less influential Religious Right; there is no cultural slave-mentality, exchanging-one-master-for-another phenomenon at issue in this case.)
“Both capitalism and socialism are not pure states in practice – they are both on a sliding scale. We're a capitalist country, but not entirely! Our economy is mixed, and so are the economies of Canada and Europe.”
First part, no. Second part, yes, definitely. Ages ago Milton Friedman noted that the USA was about fifty per cent (one-half) socialized already. The trend remains that of increasing socialism (of more and more government interventionism and replacement of private with public substitutes, as much as the Dems and libs can get away with). This is despite the relief and reform somewhat sought after 1980 and acknowledgement (albeit of questionable levels of honesty) by Dems after 1994 that too much government was bad, or government in some places was inferior to private enterprise (new use of the term “Third Way,” for this and other kinds of examples that showed socialism-leaning Dems to be less socialistic and authoritarian and more “safe and sane”).
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=128&subid=…
While private as well as public enterprise can fail or go wrong (all that subcontracting of union-laden wheezing and corrupt government services in the 1990s won't rematerialize any time soon after the antics of, say, Blackwater in this decade), and sometimes there are arguments for government substitutions of private providers or controllers of this or that, this decision has to be approached rationally, which is far from the case of the typical leftist agitation that is brain-stem level at best and most advanced for government to take over so much (anything and everything if not unchecked).
It's not just the socialization of medicine, after all –
http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2009/07/milton-fri…
“Or how we should always lower taxes even though the government is up to its forehead in debt. Or how our pitiful safety nets are the real cause of poverty.
1. First and foremost that's overdue is spending control and reconsideration of as well as reform of what government is expected to do. That's lost on the kids who want government to be their parent, but …
2. Our lack of safety nets obviously isn't the cause of poverty. (Safety nets are separate and independent of poverty, obviously, and are a response to, and an attempt to ameliorate, poverty — obviously.) Nor is poverty the cause of crime. We had neither during the Great Depression, yet there was no massive wave of crime. Try again, Chris. Oh, and we greatly increased our safety nets in the 1960s, but saw a great subsequent increase in the number of poor people in subsequent years (as well as an increase in crime).
There remains a case, despite its wrongful incentives (that are like those with current safety nets) to look someday (such as when we can afford it, which is untrue today and which likely will be never) at replacing all the existing safety nets (welfare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, everything) with a guaranteed minimum income (basic income guarantee) program. (It's not only simpler, and more direct and likely more effective, but also would justify getting rid of enormous numbers of bureaucrats and paperwork that is wasted labor! The 1960s book I have and am currently re-reading about it is full of fluff and obsolete and incorrect speculation made at that time, but is still worth reading.) But the enactment of such a program (more radical and breathtaking than an attempt currently to extend Medicare at once to everyone) would not mean there would be no people with no other income or with little more than what was guaranteed and provided to them.
Okay Dr J, I have some time to address your questions…
They're laced with paranoia about “capitalist elite” conspiracies, totalitarian threats to eradicate extra curricular activities from schools, and brazen contradictions like “Public schools are failing/America needs more socialism.”
There's nothing conspiratorial about our society being controlled by capitalist elites. See recent stories like This and this.
I've got no idea what you're talking about with removing extra curricular activities after schools… seems like there's been an explosion in clubs and whatnot that children can belong to.
Our public schools are failing versus public schools in other countries. Therefor the problem is not necessarily government involvement, just the wrong type of government involvement.
Yes the best thing do by the government was to decreased the taxes they are released for able for the people to pay their debt health and insurance in easy ways….