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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI think I just found the right wing brain trust.
Such as it is.
This appeared as a guest column in today's Boulder Daily Camera. I'm rarely speechless, but this guy seriously drank the Kool-Aid and asked for more.
As kids, we played in the basement bomb shelters our parents prepared to protect us from "The Socialists." During WWII, they witnessed socialism firsthand, gripping European countries, then morphing into totalitarianism. Our parents fought and died to stop the evil from spreading, and to free the oppressed people and nations.
But while our parents guarded the borders, socialism infiltrated and festered from within. Now socialist ideology is once again, incrementally gaining acceptance inside our institutions, our schools, and our government -- and in us.
Thursday's news heralded that "Obamacare" is Constitutional -- not because the government can force us to buy something, but because it is a tax, and taxes are constitutional. So here we go down the path of socialized medicine having the government decide what health care we can have. So much for freedom of choice and free enterprise.
(snip)
If you haven't run screaming for your Nation magazine by now, here's the link to the rest...
http://www.dailycamera.com/guest-opinions/ci_20973952/guest-commentary-socialism-threatening-our-future
LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)warrior1
(12,325 posts)JHB
(37,161 posts)For the columnist:
You're equating health care coverage (by private corporations) and slightly-higher marginal tax rates with Stalinist police states?
When you were playing in bomb shelters there were two dozen tax brackets, two-thirds of which affected incomes above the equivalent of $250,000 and reached into the millions. The rates on those brackets ran from 20% up to 91% on income over the equivalent of ~$3.5 million.
Medicare was fought tooth-and-nail by conservatives as "socialism", but now no conservative will openly admit any such thing.
Financial institutions were strictly regulated, corporate mergers had to be reviewed and were sometimes forbidden because it would reduce competition. It wasn't considered a Divine Right of Executives to do so.
We haven't been infiltrated by socialism, pal. You've been infiltrated by propaganda and ignorance.
ananda
(28,876 posts).. like the scarecrow ..
.. or a heart like the tin man.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)In the Cold War it was against "the Communists".
JHB
(37,161 posts)...and thinks the Nazis were socialists (of the sort he has in mind) because they used the word in their name, and then equates all socialism with Stalinist police states.
There's plenty of historical work on the de facto similarities between the Nazis and the Soviets despite their nominal philosophies, but to equate either with anything the Obama administration has done is simple ignorance and idiocy. But both of those are requirements for Republicans these days.
with spell check.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)though I agree with him... it has spread and infiltrated into the US... through Operation Paper Clip among others.
But this guy probably just knows this as another 'ism...
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)Last edited Sun Jul 1, 2012, 03:03 PM - Edit history (1)
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)kag
(4,079 posts)I think yours might be closer to the true "trust".