Are Republicans Socialist Too?

Since 1933 we have had aspects of socialism. The people of America have become so use to having certain programs they do not even realize that said programs are socialistic in nature. I have friends who are republicans who do not see how medicare, medicaid, public education and social security are all socialistic programs. As Norman Thomas six time US Socialist Party Presidential Candidate said, "The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened."

The piece below eloquently states the point I am trying to make and appears on American Vision.org.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Republicans are Socialist Too

by Gary DeMar, Aug 17, 2009


Lawrence O’Donnell, the stand-in host for loudmouth Ed Schultz of “The Ed Show,” put Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.) on the spot with a series of questions about Socialism. O’Donnell, sympathetic to Socialism himself, wanted Rep. Culberson to admit that Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are Socialistic programs, and since they are, why do Republicans object to government-run healthcare; it’s just more of the same. O’Donnell was parroting the claim by Newsweek that “We are all Socialists Now.” The use of “now” is a misnomer. We’ve been Socialists for quite some time as the above wealth distribution programs prove. And you can add public education as well. So these thousands of town hall protestors who denounce government healthcare would burn at the stake any politician who proposed to phase out Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare and make them financially responsible for the education of their children.



When pressed by O’Donnell, Culberson would not admit that the above programs are the definition of Socialism. O’Donnell even got the history of these programs right. Otto von Bismarck proposed them, and Adolf Hitler and Franklin Roosevelt patterned their social programs after his. To be fair, O’Donnell would not give Culberson a chance to explain his position, but the question was simple: Are these present programs Socialism, and if you had been in office when they were up for a vote, would you have voted for them? The questions were simple and direct as the answers should have been: Yes and No.

It’s not hard to trace the history of the rise of social programs in America. There’s no hidden history. What O’Donnell didn’t mention was how Adolf Hitler National Socialism (Nazi) party patterned its social agenda after the Iron Chancellor. William L. Shirer, in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, writes that a generation before Otto Von Bismarck’s policies gradually made the German people “value security over political freedom and caused them to see in the State, however conservative, a benefactor and a protector.”[1] Between 1883 and 1889 Bismarck put through a program for social security far beyond anything known in other countries at the time. It included compulsory insurance for workers against old age, sickness, accident and incapacity, and though it was organized by the State it was financed by employers and employees. Sound familiar? This is American-style Social Security!

Hitler took full advantage of the German state of mind and Bismarck’s early progress in turning the nation into a model of socialist reform. Hitler remarks in Mein Kampf, “I studied Bismarck’s socialist legislation in its intention, struggle and success.”[2] It was Hitler’s social security policies and promises that helped to get him elected. Of course, this was long before his anti-Semitic views were generally known. If anyone had bothered to read Mein Kampf, he would have seen it. But Hitler’s views on the Jews were not unique to him. Anti-Semitism was widespread in Germany and around the world. (See this exchange between an American soldier and a German woman on the topic of Anti-Semitism in America in the 1950 film The Big Lift at 1:03:50 to 1:05:10.) While I don’t want to pull the Nazi card, isn’t it interesting how the Left is demonizing a large segment of the population by describing them as “extremists” and “unpatriotic” in a way similar to what Hitler did to the Jews?

Hitler was not alone in his admiration of Bismarck and what he was able to accomplish. FDR borrowed Bismarck’s socialist agenda and created what is now known as the Social Security System. Bismarck said that “the State must take the matter in hand, since the State can most easily supply the requisite funds. It must provide them not as alms but in fulfillment of the workers’ right to look to the State where their own good will can achieve nothing more.”[3] Roosevelt and his admirers agreed. P. J. O’Brien, writing in Forward with Roosevelt, links Bismarck’s social policies with those of Roosevelt: “[The quotation by Bismarck] might have been lifted out of a speech by President Roosevelt in 1936, but the Iron Chancellor uttered it in 1871.”[4]

To show that that the debate over healthcare is not solely a Democrat obsession, former Attorney General and Governor of California, later to be nominated to the Supreme Court by Dwight D. Eisenhower and serve as Chief Justice, Earl Warren (1891–1974) “continued to demonstrate a blind faith in big government, becoming the first elected governor in U.S. history to propose compulsory health insurance. His scheme, which was defeated in the legislature, would have forced nearly all state residents into one health plan while giving state government bureaucrats the power to set hospital and doctor fees.”[5]

With the present crop of Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats in opposition, America will get a version of Obamacare Lite. The same thing happened with Social Security. It began as two percent (employee and employer pay-in) on $3000 per year, and it has been going up ever since. Now it’s 12.4 percent on $106,800. Do we really believe it’s going to be any different with healthcare?

Quote of the Day - “The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly.” Norman Thomas