Republican Senator Accidentally Makes The Case For Socialism
Those Damn Kids and Their Compassion…
In another era of politics, a sitting Senator doing a Q and A at the local high school about the issues would be an easy photo op for some positive local press. Show up, glad hand some administrators and pick out the perfect diverse combination of kids and bam, on to the next lobbyist paid lunch.
Republican Ron Johnson thought he was doing just that when he showed up to (school name). Instead of a pre-planned fluff question, a student asked Johnson: “do you consider healthcare to be a right or a privilege?” Here’s Johnson’s response:
“Do you consider food a right? Do you consider clothing a right? Do you consider shelter a right? What we have as rights is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Past that point, we have the right to freedom. Past that point is a limited resource that we have to use our opportunities given to us to afford those things…
I think it’s obviously a privilege to have food and shelter. What we need to do as public officials is try and have our economy healthy so that we have as much prosperity as possible so that we can actually increase the resources available for as high a quality and highly accessible health care as we possibly can.”
So because it doesn’t explicitly say the word Healthcare in the Declaration of Independence, healthcare cannot be considered a right? If we want to analyze the word choice of our alliterative motto of America, wouldn’t the “Life” part cover healthcare, because healthcare is literally doing things to make sure you don’t die?
Conservatives like Johnson are, thankfully in the minority, as 60 percent of Americans support providing more coverage than the federal government currently provides. Remember, even with Obamacare there is still no universal coverage, instead using a punitive penalty system to attempt to coerce people into buying insurance.
Since it appears that at least 60 percent of Americans support making sure no one is stuck uninsured, does it then follow that these Americans also believe that housing, food, and clothing is a right? And if we believe that healthcare is a right, what could be better for someone’s health than making sure they have a safe place to live, have food to eat, and aren’t naked around their roommates?
Did a sitting Republican Senator just make the case to the youth at his school Q an A for fully universal programs for housing, food, and clothing? Did Ron Johnson just make the case for socialism?
Without a radical restructuring of society, achieving goals like universal health coverage must require government action. From his comfortable seat of a fortune built on plastics manufacturing, Ron Johnson thinks that these moral principles of compassion and capitalistic principles like efficiency are inadequate to meet the standard of what is considered a right.
Maybe, though, with a little coaxing I will get Ron Johnson to go to his next local DSA chapter meeting. Utopia now, comrade.
