You can't make this stuff up

It looks like I made quite the new "friend" over at my blog buddy Freida Bee's blog.
She did a post about the Hermit giving the smack down to Ron Paul. Since Ms. Bee is a staunch Kucinich supporter she has Kucinich widgets and links to all things Kucinich on her blog and one of the offended Ron Paul supporters noticed this and he wrote a "scathing" comment about single payer health insurance after I made a comment in support of same. Here with out edit is his comment:

Those who support socialized health care, never address the issue of those of us who would care to completely opt out. Would they force us into such a system at the point of a gun? Maybe march us off to Gulags or Re-education camps to support their Nationalistic Paternalistic schemes? Anyone who supports Socialized Health Care is no better than a Nazi-Fascist. Force and coercion are at the heart Socialized medicine.

I nearly spilt my sides from laughing at that comment. This guy is, according to the blogger profile he wrote, an intelligent politically aware person. But his comment tells us he is as dumb as a the rest of the Americans who buy the crap the corporate media is spewing. And he's got his politics wrong.

First of all socialized medicine is not a "Nazi-Fascist" scheme. The very word "socialized" should lead one to believe that it sprang not from the right, which is where fascism comes from, but from the other side of the political spectrum, the left.

Second of all, though it's not like he's gonna read my blog but what the hell I'm gonna do this anyway, I think maybe this guy is stupid and he doesn't understand what the words he's throwing around mean so I'm gonna define a few of them for him. And no worries about me getting the definitions wrong because I have a degree in political science and a degree in history.

Fascism, also called 'corporatism,' is an extreme right wing political movement. The basic tenets of fascism are the privatization of most all industries and the expansion of the military's power within the state. Control of the power is centered at the top and is passed down through those loyal to the current dictator. Examples of this right wing political system in action would be Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, Japan in the 30's and 40's, and America under George W. Bush.

Socialism is a left wing political movement. The basic tenets of socialism are that the state should control some major industries, including health care, and operate them in the interests of all the people. There is still a vibrant private sector of the economy where private businesses can and do flourish. Examples of this political system in action are modern day Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and to some extent Britain, France, Canada, and most of our European allies.

For many years the American media and our government have distorted the definitions of the words fascism and socialism. The system of government we have to day, an alleged democratic republic, is actually closer to a fascist system of government. And the form of government that most all corporations fear, which is why they spread lies and falsehoods about it is, socialism. They fear a true socialist government because they think that their profits will dwindle and that the people will have too many rights. That's why they want you to think of health insurance as a privilege and not a right.

Socialism is not Communism. Socialised medicine is not fascist, it's humane and it's enjoyed all over the world and the only reason why we don't have it here is our government is being held hostage by multi national corporations and rich white people who do not want the vast majority of us to have what they have. When libertarians decry national health insurance what they are saying is, "I don't want to pay for the blacks, the poor, and the Latinos to have health insurance. I want all that money for me and my family."

Instead of paying for a single payer national health insurance system for all, our government spends obscene amount of money on defense. Here's a graph I stole off Ice Station Tango:

We are the sole superpower left in the world and we still spend almost $450 billion dollars a year on defense? Who are we defending against? The terrorists? Hell if we stopped supporting the governments that abuse them and deny them their basic human rights then we'd stop making terrorists right there, if we got out of Iraq then we'd stop turning people into terrorists right there. Hell if we did those things then we could cut back on that spending by about $350 billion and use that money to keep out whole nation strong instead of just keeping the munitions companies bank accounts strong.

It seems to me our national defense ought to be defending our people against disease and sickness. But then again I would not want to force or coerce anyone into getting and staying healthy so that they could defend our country if need be.