Commentary
From Talking Points Memo (TPM):
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) had an amazing moment at a town hall meeting, confronting a woman with an Obama-as-Hitler sign, and who asked Frank why he supported Obama’s “Nazi policy” on health care:
Frank, who is a member of at least two groups that the Nazis sent to the death camps — he is Jewish and gay — fired back. “On what planet do you spent most of your time?” he asked.
“You stand there with a picture of the President, defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis. My answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated.”
I would challenge any member of congress to ask any one of these protestors to define Socialism — or whatever “ism” they’re reading talking points supplied by the for-profit health insurance industry.
Do these protestors want to give up social security? Do they want us to do away with Medicare, and let seniors fend for themselves? Shall we close all public schools and condemn them as socialist publicly-funded educational centers?
Perhaps the protestors would have us do away with all public fire departments? Will they turn members of their fire departments away when their homes are burning, deriding them as Nazi socialist publicly-funded fire extinguishing services?
Better yet, why are these protestors not calling for the eradication of all police departments throughout the United States? Where is their consistency? If one of these protestors, heaven forbid, should fall victim to crime, will they have the guts to stand on their convictions and refuse any help from the Nazi socialist publicly-funded security officers working for their town or state?
Of course not. Because having a fire department in your town is not socialism. Having a well-trained police department is not socialism. Police officers and firefighters are not Nazis because their salaries are paid by public tax dollars.
And neither social security, Medicare, or health care, come anywhere close to socialism.
Face it: the Libertarian solution is naive. Getting rid of all government may sound compelling on paper or during a discussion in a coffee shop, but government is not the problem. The movement conservatives have had much success chipping away at government, and they have left us with a Third World Economy, where the vast majority of wealth is in the hands of a very small percentage of our population. They turned us into the greatest debtor nation in world history. Likewise, socialism, or on the more extreme end, communism, are both naive. Government involvement in every aspect of life drowns innovation and creativity.
The only solution that works is a Democratic Republic, where every day we seek the Goldilocks Solution to government: What amount of government is just right? Goldilocks government demands critical thinking, creativity, and innovation. Constantly. It’s not easy to know “what is just right” at all times, in every circumstance.
These protestors are defenders of the status quo. No doubt they have health insurance, and pay through the nose for it. And they will have the option to keep their health insurance once a public option becomes available. They are, in their heart of hearts, incredibly selfish and naive.
Americans succeed best when we stand as one for all. Congress must wake up, gather courage, set egos aside, and get work for the benefit of all.
