When Do We Call It 'Socialism'?

One of my favorite things to observe in the jubilant Left these days is an unwillingness to embrace the possibility that the first 100 days of Democratic rule might be socialism.

I think The Left knows well enough that socialism is not going to be broadly embraced, but I think it also knows that given bits and pieces of socialistic policy here and there, especially if dressed up with different words, like 'benefit', can make for broad enough an embrace.

My greatest fear is that we will be treated to socialized medicine in the first 100 days. If I learned anything from Mitch Daniels' first term, or Bill Clinton's, it's that you do the controversial things very early, and then you spend the next three years doing innocuous things. Well, it also helped that in both of these cases, the response to their first year was that they lost their parties' legislative majorities and returned to divided government.

When I mention this to my Obama-supporting friends, I get a heap of resistence, pooh-poohing the idea that there are any socialistic intents, just an improvement of benefits, or increasing access, or something, anything besides socialism.

I'd like to see how some of you would define socialized medicine.

Here's a definition I consider useful, from the Cato Institute, in a recent publication:

Socialized medicine exists to the extent that government controls medical resources and socializes the costs. Notice that under this definition, it is irrelevant whether we describe medical resources (e.g.,hospitals, employees) as “public” or “private.” What matters—what determines real as opposed to nominal ownership—is who controls the resources. By that definition, America’s health sector is already more than half socialized, and Obama’s health care plan would socialize medicine even further.

There is one main reason I oppose socialized health care. I believe it inherently unjust to involuntarily cause one person pay for any good or service consumed by another person.

I've always been mystified by The Left's gigantic blind spot, willfully or otherwise, on this point. How can one oppose involuntary servitude, or involuntary conscription into the military, and yet accept involuntary responsibility for the cost of another's health care? In any of these cases, an individual is denied the full decision of the allocation of his resources. They are taken by the state, against the will of the individual, and given elsewhere, on the basis that the state has first claim, and knows best besides.

This Redistribution of Wealth Is Trickier Than I Thought

To be fair, both Obama and McCain stand united in their belief, their faith, in the justice and value of the redistribution of wealth. I haven't seen anything from McCain to suggest otherwise. Of course, Obama has come out and said that he favors it.

Nobody seems to think himself wealthy. The blind spot here is that wealth is relative. Even if you are comfortably a recipient of redistribution today, what happens of the upper class begins to be eroded? Or, get this, if you earn a fat killing? Or, if there are just an awful lot of poor in greater need than you?

I love this personal experiment in wealth redistribution. It involves a businessman who sees a homeless man and a waiter with an Obama tie. Who needs the businessman's tip more? That's who gets it.

The waiter stammered a few "Why practice on me? I’m just a local college student!" retorts and then angrily stormed away from the table in a steaming huff of progressive self-righteous indignation.

Apparently, after experiencing firsthand the application of such socialistic governance from the perspective of the rightful wage earner, my young liberal-minded waiter was quickly convinced that income redistribution was much easier to support as a noble, magnanimous social policy than when his own hard-earned income was about to be redistributed, against his will, to another I deemed more needy.

Or, as Monty Python nailed it many years ago:



That clip only boils down to the punchline. The whole skit is a beauty, but long, spread out over Flying Circus Episode #37. Find it here.

(h/t Charleston Watch)

Where Will We Defend Freedom?

(Fishers, IN)- If either John McCain or Barack Obama came out tomorrow and said that he had a plan that would eliminate about half of the newspapers in this country, and furthermore tell you which ones you could read, would you get behind that plan, or would you fight it? Would you say that there was a free market for newspapers in such a scenario? Or freedom of the press?

The Cato Institute's Michael Cannon so describes the Obama health care plan:

"He would let the Federal government dictate the content and the price of every private insurance plan in the United States."

and

"Imagine Barack Obama as President propose that he was going to have the government dictate the content of every news program in the United States, and eliminate half of the existing programs and newspapers that are out there. Would
you call that a government-dominated system? You certainly wouldn't call it a free press. And that's largely what Barack Obama wants to do with health care."

So says Tanner in the October 7, 2008 Cato Daily Podcast.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is both wilfull ignorance and deceptive talk among the backers of 'health care for all'. They tend to bristle at the word 'socialism', or the phrase 'socialized health care'. Well, what else would it be, then?

Oh! I know! Another drain on our ailing economy.