Sticks, Stones, and . . . Socialism?

"Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words ...?" They can derail health care reform. While the debate over health care reform rages, one particularly invidious and pervasive tactic has been to label the government's efforts "socialism," even Nazi socialism (a charge leveled by Rush Limbaugh). It's still an open question whether this attempt to delegitimize health care reform by labeling it socialism will work, but one thing is sure: it's had an unequivocal impact on the overall debate. I bring this up because, in the social sciences, there is a tendency to discount subjective (or more accurately, intersubjective) forces--such as words and ideas--but it is clear that intersubjective forces are driving the debate today. Many of these ideas, of course, are completely baseless or are so hyperbolic they should be funny. But we know that, to many Americans, they are deadly serious.

So it is with the concept of socialism. The Obama administration clearly is not advocating socialism; instead, it is advancing a form of publicly funded health care, wherein the government is not even involved in the direct delivery of medical care (as it is, say, in Britain). In this regard, it might not even be accurate to call the administration's efforts "socialized health care." But, for the sake of argument, let's say that it is socialized health care. The question becomes, why is this so wrong? Certainly, to many critics of the Obama administration, it really doesn't matter what you call it: any government involvement in the health care system is necessarily bad; not only that, it is un-American. The logic here seems to be that the government itself is evil--maybe a necessary evil--but evil nonetheless. The government can do no right, so it should do nothing at all.

This is an odd position. After all, the same vicious opponents to socialized health care, generally speaking, have no problem at all with socialized national defense. Nor do they have a problem with socialized police and socialized courts, or socialized retirement (i.e., social security), and so on. Ironically, many don't even have a problem with socialize medicine, as a large number of the most outspoken critics are clearly taking advantage of Medicare. And, of course, legislators who are against socialized health care have no problem with their own government-provided health care plans.

All these contradictions fall by the wayside, though, through the intersubjective and subjective power of a simple word: socialism.