Why I'm a socialist
I'M A LEFT-wing veteran. Recently, I had a conversation with a right-wing vet from North Carolina about the polarization between left and right in America. He told me, "It's not about left-right. It's Democrat-Republican, and the Democrats have been taken over by Communists. They're Marxist-Leninists."
I'M A LEFT-wing veteran.
Recently, I had a conversation with a right-wing vet from North Carolina about the polarization between left and right in America. He told me, "It's not about left-right. It's Democrat-Republican, and the Democrats have been taken over by Communists. They're Marxist-Leninists."
(I'm a Democrat who voted for Barack Obama, but when it comes to things like Afghanistan policy, I believe Obama is in cahoots with guys like him.)
"That's simply absurd," I said.
"I won't talk about it," he said.
He turned his back and walked away.
You hear a lot of this kind of talk these days. One day, Obama is a Marxist-Leninist; the next, he's Hitler. Words aren't used to inform or enlighten - they're used like blunt instruments.
This kind of self-satisfied ignorance in conjunction with volatile labels makes me want to examine just what the heck it means for an American to be a "socialist" at this moment. To be perfectly honest, I think a little socialism is just what this country needs.
LABELS ARE by definition limiting. I sometimes call myself a "libertarian/socialist" because I believe in decriminalizing drugs (libertarianism), while I support single-payer health care (socialism). As Walt Whitman said: "If I contradict myself, so be it; I contain multitudes."
It's good to mix things up. Creative ideas and change are impossible if you obsess about labels. And clearly this is why certain people are doing just that.
Those who glibly label President Obama a "socialist" should at least be fair and apply the equally glib label of "fascist" to George Bush. If you accept the common view that American politics is a pendulum swinging from right to left and back, then, if Obama is a democratically-elected socialist, Bush certainly was a democratically-elected fascist.
By dictionary definition, a "socialist" believes in state ownership of the means of production and distribution, and a "fascist" believes in militarized national regimentation.
A more accurate depiction of our government than the pendulum swing between extremes might be that it's a shifting mixture of political tendencies, a volatile, constantly changing amalgam of many strains of governance.
Which brings us to the current bugaboo: socialized medicine.
In my Webster's, it's defined as "Medical and hospital services for a class or population administered by an organized group (as a state agency) and paid for from funds obtained usually by assessments, philanthropy or taxation."
This is precisely what Medicare is and precisely what the medical service of our armed forces is. So I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but we already have socialized medicine, and lots of it.
Sen. John McCain is opposed to the so-called public option, which is nonprofit government-run health insurance that would compete with for-profit private insurance companies. McCain says that's unfair. Why? Because it would be cheaper and citizens would choose it in the marketplace over the private option.
"There is no doubt in my mind that this 'public option' would sooner or later take over our health-care system," he said on Fox News, and the system would eventually be "government-run."
This is from a guy born in a government-run Navy hospital in Panama who has been covered by some kind of government-run, socialized medicine plan for virtually his entire life. If he wasn't now covered by the generous government-run, socialized medicine program of the Senate, he'd be covered by the government-run, socialized medicine plan known as Medicare.
Why does a guy like this begrudge ordinary working Americans some semblance of the care and security he's had all his life? And why don't Democrats, the ones who are supposed to be bloody "socialists," just say they want all Americans to have a system like the elderly, our legislators in Congress and the 1.5 million active-duty members of our military have, programs everyone agrees work marvelously?
With polls indicating two-thirds of Americans are for a public option, how can guys like McCain get away with keeping working Americans at the mercy of corporate insurance firms driven by the pursuit of profit to dream up clever ways to avoid providing them with medical care?
We have a system that provides the benefits of socialized medicine only to select, often elite, communities, while politicians like McCain get away with characterizing their own medical plans as somehow evil when applied to working people.
This is why I'm a socialist.
John Grant is a Plymouth Meeting writer/ photographer with private medical insurance. He can be reached at