March 20, 2019
Page 9
O PINION
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Suddenly You’re a Walking Red Nightmare
Stay tuned
for more fear
mongering
C huCk C ollins
Beware of the
specter of social-
ism! Anytime a pol-
itician proposes a
wildly popular idea
that helps ordinary
people, a few grumpy conserva-
tives will call them “socialists.”
Propose to reduce college debt,
help sick families, or ensure the
super-rich pay their fair share of
taxes — suddenly you’re a walk-
ing red nightmare.
Utah Republican Rep. Chris
Stewart is so alarmed he’s con-
vened an “Anti-Socialism Cau-
cus” to ward off “the primitive ap-
peal of socialism” that will “infect
our institutions.”
Democrats’ talk of restoring
higher income tax rates on the
wealthiest or helping families
with childcare was enough to
trigger Treasury Secretary Steve
Munchin to quip, “We’re not go-
ing back to socialism.”
These same politicians consis-
tently vote for tax cuts for the rich
by
and to gut taxes and regulations
on corporations so they can exer-
cise their full freedom and liber-
ty — to mistreat workers, pollute
the environment and rip off their
customers.
The “shrink government”
fear-mongers want you to be-
lieve there are only two flavors
of economic ice cream. Choose
strawberry and you get liber-
ty-choking gulag communism.
From this vantage, any propos-
al to rein in the unchecked power of
global corporations and the rule-rig-
ging rich is creeping socialism.
Choice number two, blueber-
ry, is plutocracy, a society where
the super-rich lord over the rest of
us. It’s an economically polarized
dystopia with stagnant wages and
a declining standard of living for
the majority.
Conservative demagogues aim
to scare you into embracing their
pro-plutocrat agenda as the only
tolerable choice.
The good news is there many
flavors to choose from. A number
of presidential candidates have
proposed or endorsed policies
such as low cost or free college,
a higher minimum wage, taxing
the super-rich, and investing in
infrastructure to reduce carbon
emissions.
These ideas are tremendous-
ly popular with voters, winning
majority support among Repub-
licans, independents and Dem-
ocrats. As Fox News sheepishly
reported from their own polling,
over 70 percent of voters support
tax hikes on households with over
$10 million in income — includ-
ing 54 percent of Republicans.
What would today’s hysterical
Republicans say about the “social-
ist” presidency of Dwight Eisen-
hower? Most likely they would call
him “Red Ike.” After all, during
Eisenhower’s two terms between
1953 and 1960, the wealthy paid
a top tax rate of 91 percent on in-
comes over the equivalent of $1.7
million for an individual and $3.4
million for a couple.
That crafty pinko Eisenhow-
er also presided over govern-
ment-subsidized mortgages that
helped millions of Americans pur-
chase their first home and attend
college for free. He presided over
the construction of public housing
and state-owned infrastructure
(like highways).
In the early 1960s, the spec-
ter of socialism stalked the land
again, this time in the form of a
proposal to create a national health
insurance program to cover senior
citizens. Conservatives mounted a
full-throated resistance movement
to what George H.W. Bush at the
time called “socialized medicine.”
The rest of us know it as Medi-
care.
Prior to the passage of Medi-
care in 1965, half of the country’s
seniors didn’t have hospital insur-
ance, and one in four went without
medical care due to cost concerns.
One in three seniors were in pov-
erty. Half a century later, nearly all
seniors have access to affordable
health care, and the elderly pover-
ty rate has fallen to 14 percent.
Now a majority of Americans
support some form of “Medicare
for All,” expanding universal cov-
erage beyond seniors and disabled
people to include children and
adults.
Stay tuned for more fear mon-
gering. Universal health care, the
red baiters will say, will zap our
national initiative and hurl us
toward Soviet-style tyranny. In-
stead, maybe it will mean not hav-
ing to choose between paying rent
or for medicine.
Chuck Collins directs the Pro-
gram on Inequality at the Institute
for Policy Studies. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.
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Throw Pillows (With
Other Services) : $5.00
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