Is It Socialism?

Howie and the teabaggers

In the Thom Hartmann book I never tire of writing about, Threshold-- The Crisis of Western Culture, Hartmann talks about the mechanics of a young man in Michigan starting a small business and how utterly dependent the efforts were on "the commons."

The electricity that was delivered to us passed through public streets maintained by the City of East Lansing. My customers drove to us on public streets. Most were students attending a largely publicly financed "land grant" university. My employees were literate because they'd attended public schools that were operated by the government. I could accept and cash checks and know that the bank wouldn't run off with my money because of federal and state banking regulators. [Apparently Hartmann was writing about a time before Phil Gramm was able to destroy the banking system's reliability.] My contracts with suppliers were enforced with a government-operated court system, making it possible for me to safely predict that people would keep their word to deliver goods after I'd paid for them. If they failed to do so, there as a government-operated police and jail system that could be used to induce them to behave honestly. [Again, this is about a period before the GOP and some conservative Democrats had run amuck at the behest of their corporate paymasters and ravaged the commons.]

My employees would reliably show up for work because their food supply was safe because of government stands and inspections, and because the air and water were clean enough to breathe without causing asthma attacks or disabling diseases. They didn't demand a pension plan from me because we were all-- they and I-- paying into Social Security. We were able to offer an inexpensive health insurance policy-- as I recall, it cost us around thirty dollars a month per employee-- because at that time Blue Cross/Blue Shield was required by the State of Michigan to be a not-for-profit corporation whose sole purpose was to provide health insurance, and at that time our hospitals were all similarly nonprofits that delivered high-quality, inexpensive care.

I don't expect the teabaggers to understand any of this. The ones I've met and talked to are ignorant and filled with the kind of hatred and fear making them utterly incapable of groking anything like this, even when not on prescription drugs, which most of them seemed to be on. But when you hear a Republican shrieking about "freedom," they're talking about "freedom" from these things. Their liberty is the liberty of the Law of the Jungle. It's a religion of sociopaths. Remember, as you talk with your friends and family and colleagues and neighbors in the next two weeks about the election November 2:

• It’s time to return to the values that made this country strong, like hard work, responsibility, and common sense, not radical right-wing ideologies that call for the end of protections for working families when we need them the most.

• In times like these, when no one’s job is secure and the average working family is struggling to get by, we need to increase protections for ordinary Americans, like the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and Social Security and Medicare-- not eliminate them.

• Most of my Republican friends, neighbors, and family members, like most Democrats, are good and decent people, who hold mainstream American values. But forcing rape victims to bear their rapist’s baby and phasing out Social Security and Medicare aren’t mainstream American values.

• We need leaders who can work together in Congress, but the Republican Party has expelled its moderates and is now being run by extremists.

• They talk about the free market, but they mean freedom for CEOs to outsource our jobs to China and eliminate the minimum wage, so big corporations can pay workers in this country what they pay them in India.

• At a time when the middle class is shrinking and two-thirds of Americans are living month to month, the Republicans’ primary concern is extending tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

• And when millions of Americans can’t find work, for Republicans in Congress to vote repeatedly to cut off unemployment insurance for laid-off construction and factory workers is shameful, and now they’re calling for elimination of unemployment insurance entirely.

• Americans are angry, and with good reason. With unemployment at 10 percent and most families struggling to make ends meet, it’s hard to have much faith either party.

• But before you get too excited about the Tea Party, make sure you know what’s in the tea.

• They’ve joined with Congressional Republicans to end the minimum wage, while demanding more tax breaks for billionaires and corporations that outsource American jobs-- the same people who are bankrolling their campaigns.

• They want to end student loans and aid to local schools, which would prevent our kids from ever competing against the Chinese, who are increasing, not decreasing, their investment in education.

• And the social agenda of tea party Republicans is as radical as their economic agenda. They want government to intervene in the personal decisions married couples make about birth control, and a powerful Republican Senator and Tea Party spokesman has even called for forbidding unmarried women who’ve had premarital sex from teaching.

• We don’t need 14th century solutions to 21st century problems.