l'esprit de l'escalier

I don’t think there is a single issue in the United States right now that is getting as much focus as the health care debate.

It seems the central focus of this debate has been whether or not the US is willing to accept “socialism” in it’s health care system (or Nazism, depending on who you ask).  As I listen to, read and watch all the commentators who keep throwing around the word Socialism trying to drum up Cold War sentiments and scare people into thinking the US is on a march to the Soviet Union I am constantly reminded of something from George W. Bush Regarding SCHIP.  I cannot find the direct quote, but as I remember it was “passing SCHIP will bring us one step closer to Socialized Health care” (source).

I found a lot of humor in that quote as I could only imagine it registering in two completely opposite ways in people’s ears.  For me, when I heard him say that, all I could think was “Great!  Then let’s pass SCHIP!” though I imagine for a lot of other people the thinking was quite different.

So why are people so scared of Socialism that the word could be used to prevent children from getting health care?

I think in large part it is due to a grave misunderstanding as to what Socialism truly is.   I believe for most people it is in no way different than Communism, that is to say that if we had a Socialist economy it would be no different than a Communist economy.  To really examine this reasoning we need look no further than Socialist International, an umbrella organization representing all of the Socialist parties throughout the world.

To equate Socialism and Communism is to say that:

Australia, The United Kingdom, Japan, Norway and Spain are no different than China, the USSR or North Korea.

And those are just the Socialist parties that are currently holding the majority of seats in their respective parliaments!

If we take into account countries that have a strong opposition party that is a member of Socialist International we can add:

Canada

Denmark

Albania

Italy

Germany

And well, the list goes on.

All of these countries have something else in common beyond their membership in Socialist International.  All of the countries listed (and many more) are the same countries that were willing to participate in the Iraq War.

If you want to take that further, compare the list of nations with strong Socialist presence to the list of NATO members (again, Norway, Denmark, Canada, the UK, Italy, Iceland, Germany, Spain etc…)

So the very same countries the US is willing to go to war with and more importantly the very same countries that were willing to stand up to a legitimate Communist threat (which was a greater threat to a great deal of these nations than the US in many ways) are the same that are not scared of the word Socialism.  They are so “not scared” of Socialism that they have even been willing to integrate into their economy to a point that they have now outranked the US in quality of life, education, healthcare, press freedom and have managed to stay mostly on par with US in economic freedom (2).

While I don’t mean to argue for one type of market or another, the US clearly has much less to lose (and much more to gain) from integrating Social Policies in it’s market than many of the opponents of this so called “Socialism” would have you believe.

And in closing I leave with a simple question about the state of health care in the US.  If what we want to avoid is Socialism, that would imply we currently have capitalism.  If there is no choice in a market, can it really be called capitalism?