An editorial I wrote 2 years ago..you know how we socialists are..Now..with the Medicaid fiasco

[w8liftinglady]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4790824

Recently, I wrote a letter to the editor that generated a lot of response, much of it negative, regarding a national health plan. I love this discussion because at least we are talking about health care. Many readers called me and the program socialistic because of the government funding of this program. I did want to remind you all of a few programs that are run by the city, state or national governments that we would be worse off without:

• Police and fire departments are funded by city, state and federal funds. • Streets and bridges are funded by state and federal funds. • Farmers and ranchers are assisted by many state and federal programs. • Public schools exist because of state and federal funds. • The public library system in most towns and cities is publicly funded. • 86 percent of America gets its water from a publicly funded utility service. • Sewage treatment plants are state and federally funded. • The local, state and national weather services are publicly funded. • The state and national park systems are publicly funded. • Our military and veteran’s system is federally funded. • The Rural Electrification Act provided electricity to 85 percent of America’s farmland that had no access to electricity. • The GI Bill has enabled millions of veterans to serve their countries and pursue their education afterwards. Many of the nurses and physicians I know are there because of the GI Bill. • Social Security and Medicare have provided a safety net for millions of older Americans who would have had nothing in their retirement years ... again, federally-funded.

Do you support these programs? I guess you are a socialist, too. If not, I suggest you petition your representatives to remove local, state and federal funding of these programs. Privatize it all. And please, show me how you’ll do it.

[raccoon]

1. Great post. Rec'd. nt

[dkf]

2. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to expect that because you believe in some government functions

That you must believe all potential programs must be also.

In truth, I wonder if some of these programs have popular support and if they would survive a referendum.

"Taxation without Representation" was the reason we dumped Britain. It is based on the principle of the consent of the Governed. If it does not have popular support it really should not have standing.

[w8liftinglady]

3. they probably wouldn't be..because people could care less

programs that benefit the public good are socialist.Privatize them,then do away with them,then cry when they no longer exist.
we are seeing it in action-at least in my state...healthcare,streets and public works,employment benefits,environmental standards dropping,homeless veterans.

But,By God-they wave their Chinese-made,child labor mass-produced flags.

yeah,i guess I am a socialist,dammit.

[dkf]

4. The key is to build popular support but it has to be almost overwhelming.

Even the popular public option couldn't make it.

[Igel]

5. Sometimes you have to argue against their argument.

Not against what you think their argument is.

Sometimes it's hard to even know what the argument actually is: Many Americans have this nasty habit of "feeling" their way towards answers rather than "thinking" through problems; they like to to emote and not reason.

There's also the complication that you have to watch out because "they" don't have an argument, "they" are legion and have nearly as many arguments. Doctors should first observe, then diagnose, then treat.

So. . . Some argue against federal financing, but allow local financing of some things. Schools, for example. Or they don't want local or federal financing for roads but state-level financing. They often have quite coherent arguments for where the funding should originate. "They", being plural, usually have numerous arguments for each of these things, depending who, exactly, you talk to. It's like DU: Saying that "DU believes X" is a very, very foolish thing to say about most topics. This isn't a DU-specific problem, it's a common problem. One shared by all.

Then there's the issue of the "common good," a frequently invoked principle. It started off with a specific meaning of "common"--which involved *everybody* and not just some. It didn't mean "average" or "frequent." If goods are held in common, everybody has access to them. The meaning's shifted. It really shifted in the '30s, but the process started after that and continues to this day. A lot of the biggest dissents in American politics come from polysemy, where a given word has multiple meanings--and with many arguing that unless you accept their changes to a word's meaning you're somehow heretical. This has always seemed backward to me, making the long-dead speaker somehow obligated to have always intended whatever the listener currently wants, not obligating the listener to understand what the speaker intended. It always seems that they want the moral force of and condioned assent to a long-established and generally accepted principle without the principle itself. I don't credit most "common good" arguments because of it, but I hear them made fairly often, esp. by those who insist on the revised meaning of the word.

For most people these days, the "common good" means "it helps somebody" or "helps commoners." That's not what it started off as. It started off as the kinds of projects and things that benefited everybody, that everybody, given their current status, could use. Defense, for example, defends everybody--perhaps I have less than some who would be defended, but I would be defended no less. Police, fire, military fall into this category. Roads, bridges and ports are an early example. Most arguers, I think, would also put water, sewage, probably the park systems and public libraries, and conceivably a few other things into the "common good"--if the funding situated at the right level of government. Veteran's benefits are paid as part of defense; a thank-you for service transmogrified into a right and don't figure into this argument for most people. The "right level of government" is important, because you want the tax base to be the part of the public that'll hold the improvement or service in common.

This view breaks down around the edges, mostly because reality is never quite so neat, there's seldom completely equal access or use or benefits. "Common" hides a multitude of variability.

Schools are on the slope: They don't benefit everybody so they don't directly serve the "common good," but they do serve a lot of people and provide the infrastructure that helps pretty much everybody; it's a kludge. The level of government where funding occurs matters.

Social Security and Medicare are further down the slope and lose supporters. Still, they benefit everybody, in some sense, even if the benefits are variable. Arguments to make them *not* benefit everybody would push them even further away from the "common good" argument, making it more of a "commoner's good" argument and more like Medicaid.

Lumping unlike things into a single question and then forcing them to be dealt with as though they were like things is a very nice rhetorical device and works on Americans that "feel" their way in problem solving. It fails the logic test, though.