FACING THE SOCIALIST MENACE

Hank Rishel
Sep 6, 2018 · 3 min read

In Florida last week they held primaries (party elections), to choose the parties’ candidates for governor. The Republicans nominated Ron DeSantis who views himself as particularly Trumpian. Trump did enthusiastically endorse him. The Democrats ended up nominating Andrew Gillum, the African American mayor of Florida’s capitol, Tallahassee. The fall campaign began immediately with DeSantis accusing Gillum of being among other things, a “socialist”. We are going to hear a great deal about the dangers of socialism from Republicans in this campaign. Twenty eight year old Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez did win her district in New York, running against a long time congressman as a Democratic Socialist, and became an instant threat to our national well-being.

In this fall’s campaign socialism will be used by Republican campaigners as an anger symbol. Political candidates tend to hold up symbols for people to be angry with. It helps to get people out to vote. Those symbols often are about things posing no danger to voters at all. Candidate after candidate during this fall campaign will hold up Nancy Pelosi. Ask yourself why people should really be terrified about a 78 year old grandmother from California? And, we are going to hear a lot about “socialism” too. The implication will be that somehow “socialism” is a danger to us all.

As Americans we tend to believe that our capitalist “competitive system” is what has made this country so successful, that competition galvanizes people into action. There is a problem: There are certain areas in every economy where competition just does not work. If education had been purely competitive through our history then the children of the well off could be elaborately educated (so that they could be “competitive”) but the children of the poor would have received little or no education at all. In order to allow those young people to even begin to be competitive, education could not be competitive.

There is certainly no reason to believe that health care was ever really competitive. In many parts of this country there are almost no hospitals at all, certainly not competing ones. Because medical care is not competitive but the government pays, hospital corporations have evolved into multibillion dollar businesses and our health care is the most expensive in the world. We only pretend that health services and medications are competitive. The same is true of transportation. Would it really be practical to have multiple privately owned roads whose owners would compete? The roads that you drive on are socialized. There really isn’t any alternative.

So, what about socialism, that big bugaboo that Ron DeSantis wants the Florida voters to reject with fear and trembling? In every country in Europe, all with socialized economies, there is a democratically elected government. Often there is one “socialist” party that wants to socialize a bit more of the economy and a competing party that wants to socialize less, and that’s it. Here, we have socialized roads and schools. Socialists would vote to add a few more things. That’s all there is! That is why Floridians should be so terrified!

Socialism is really a variation on pure capitalism! After the legislature/parliament votes to socialize, let us say, health care, the rest of the economy remains as capitalistic as ever (are all those Swedish Volvos socialized?) In fact, because health care is less expensive in socialized systems, the rest of the competitive economy may work better. There is a reason that the winners of measures of citizen happiness always turn out to be socialized Scandinavian countries. Their people are happier!

The truth is that people love socialism. The huge number of veterans who object to the military’s socialized medical system could form one quartet and tour the country. People love socialism but they don’t want to have something called socialism. So we invent convoluted programs designed to produce socialist results without actually having government provide the service. Both Medicare and Obamacare are a result. The government provides a great deal of the money but care is still in the hands of people trying to maximize profit for themselves. The result is that we end up paying more for less care than other country.

So, now we face the fall election campaign. Four hundred and thirty five members of the House of Representatives will be elected on November 6th. One third of our one hundred Senators will be newly elected. There will be legislative elections in almost every state. Millions of words will be written and spoken. If one of those words is socialism you can probably be sure of one thing. Someone is being conned!

H.J. Rishel

9/06/2018

Hank Rishel

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Retired political science professor of 40+ years. Educated at Olivet, UofM, MSU, Northwestern, & Harvard. Hoping to make politics a fun & exciting topic for all