Socialism in the Healthcare Debate

Ideologies such as Socialism or Fascism are foreign to our American way of doing things. We just do not think that way. The words Socialism and Fascism make no sense in the context of our practical American politics.

American political discourse, in regard to health care and practically everything else, focuses on specific issues that have been with us from the beginning of our republic. The most basic of these issues include the role of the federal government, states rights, individual rights and the nature of property.

The answer to these questions is not predetermined because the government ownership of the means of production is a desired outcome, Socialism, nor because we prefer a constitutional role for corporate power, Fascism. Nor do we have a collective entity called the state which is prior to the individual.

It is nonsense to accuse President Obama and the healthcare reform bill of being Socialist. Opposition to, or support for, the president or his policies must be made in the context of American political discourse. In that discourse, our time is spent in pragmatic questions: how much do things cost, where will we get the money? Will it make health care better at the same time it curtails rising costs? And, if someone objects, can it pass the constitutional test?

To be sure, we do have a deep theoretical rift in the American body politic. In this present political and economic crisis we are arguing disagreements that are deeply embedded in our constitutional structure. They are there because the founding fathers knew and fought over all these same questions. They gave us the Constitution as a framework within which we could contest how we honor individual, state and federal rights and responsibilities while we govern ourselves.

US history shows two traditional ways to address these issues. Hamilton was the progenitor of the Federalist-Whig-Republican tradition. Jefferson is claimed for the Jackson-Roosevelt-Democratic tradition. Hamilton and Jefferson were fighting over the role of government, states rights and the nature of private property the same way we are.

And so it has been all through our history. The Union almost broke up over these issues and even the Civil War did nothing to resolve them.

The presidential election compromise of 1876, which withdrew federal troops from the South, turned Northern military victory into a political armistice. That compromise freed the Confederacy of constitutional restraints and resuscitated states rights while property rights in slaves were then exercised through Jim Crow and segregation. The compromise lasted until 1965 and the Voting Rights Act. That, and the Civil Rights Act violated the armistice because they forced the South to recognize and implement the equal rights provisions of the Constitution.

Nixon's Southern strategy reflected the same rift and served to sharpen the edge of our discourse.

The present political and economic crisis is forcing us to face these questions again because both of these traditions are alive and well in America today. But George W. Bush is not a fascist and Barak Obama is not a socialist. Their presidencies reflect these ongoing American, not European, political tensions. They each stand proudly on separate sides of that political divide that goes back to the founding fathers.

The difference of opinion is the reason that we have political parties and elections. The multiple failures of the Bush administration led to the election of President Obama and a Democratic House and Senate.

The rift is also regional because one set of opinions was, and still is, best expressed by the Confederacy. President Obama's favorable rating is in the 60s to 80s in every region except the South, where it is 27. Racism probably has something to do with this yet any Northern president with President Obama's agenda of national solutions for healthcare, energy, individual rights and a preference for diplomacy over military action would run into really stiff opposition in the South.

These questions will never, can never, be definitively answered because there is no correct answer. We have what is essentially a difference of opinion. Politics in a democracy are the continuing struggle about how we relate to others and try to get along when honest citizens disagree.

Socialism and Fascism are European concepts; they belong to a political discourse based on ideology and nationalism. American politics are based on pragmatism and the rule of law.

The use of these European terms is in fact an accusation of un-Americanism. It is disrespectful of the accused and the demeaning of the accuser.