If we like it, it's not 'socialist'

Is there anything more "socialist" than a fire truck?

After all, having a fire truck means these things:

(1) The government has decided that it, not the private sector, will be in charge of putting out fires.

(2) The government will tax the citizens for the fire truck regardless of their wishes.

(3) The citizens will have no choice in calling upon the government to put out their fires.

And yet, not many people are opposed to having a Fire Department, are they? We generally accept it as a legitimate government function.

We also accept Social Security and Medicare — two giant government programs that are based on taxing one group of Americans to give the money to somebody else.

Don't get me wrong. The people who get Social Security and Medicare earned it. They worked all their lives and paid their taxes. Now it's their turn.

But Social Security and Medicare wouldn't exist without the government. They are the government. They work by taxing Person A and giving the money to Person B.

I'm reading a news article from 1965 quoting the president of the American Medical Association about the imminent passage of Medicare. The AMA spent that year warning against "socialized medicine."

The AMA fellow called Medicare an "invasion of the voluntary relationship between the patient and the physician." He said it would threaten "the foundation of the nation's protection against disease and suffering."

That was 44 years ago. Just a few years ago, we decided we liked Medicare so much that we would throw in prescription drugs, too. Everybody seems to like that idea, no matter the cost.

A lot of folks are running around yelling about "socialism" lately. What they actually mean is, "The kind of socialism that we don't like, as opposed to the kind of socialism that we do like."

In no way am I jumping into bed with the president and the Democrats to slam through some danged-fool scheme on health care.

Whatever they come up with might be a bad idea. It might cost too much. It might be too bureaucratic. It might take away too many choices. Like a lot of folks, I do not trust those guys one bit and am wary until I see the deal.

But the idea that President Barack Obama has a "socialist agenda" and what we have now is a divinely blessed free market — this weird contraption of $100 aspirins, huge private profits, government-run Medicare and Medicaid and no insurance for anybody left out in the cold — is just plain silly.

As in 1935 and 1965, people who are trying to protect their money, or to make political gain, are throwing around the S-word these days. Their chattering tools on TV have revived it as a household term.

Millions of Americans who themselves have benefited from the intervention of the government are repeating it. The president of the United States can't even tell schoolchildren to study hard and stay in school because, you know, he is promoting a "socialist agenda."

I saw in the paper that Pinellas County is going to keep handing out money to private companies to get them to relocate, expand, or just stay here. And it will all be even more top secret than it was before — the county commissioners won't even know the identity of the company. Still, I suppose that the direct transfer of tax dollars into private hands is not "socialist" as long as it's not for health care.