Norman Thomas
“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism,” six-time Socialist candidate for president Norman Thomas reportedly said in 1944. “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.”
All across Europe, conservative parties are in the ascendancy. These right-wing parties have pledged to fight the recession without resorting to stimulus spending and other liberal methods. However, certain socialist policies are completely enshrined within the political and governing structures of these nations. Health care is a great example. Conservative European politicians cannot and do not go after nationalized health care.
Health care currently accounts for 18% of the American GDP—an incredible statistic. If the liberals on Capitol Hill and on Pennsylvania Avenue succeed in nationalizing the American health care system, the United States would join the ranks of European social democracies. As Bill Kristol warned in his (in)famous memo over HillaryCare in 1994: “its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy.”
The situation in 2009 is more precarious than 1994. The United States is already headed in the European direction. Newsweek’s Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas, Norman Thomas’ grandson, titled a February article “We Are All Socialists Now.” They noted that the percentage of federal expenditures are projected to reach 39.9% of American GDP by 2010, while European spending declines to 47.1%. The Bush administration’s prescription drug plan, the bank bailouts, the stimulus plan, and the federal intervention in General Motors have combined to vastly increase the scope and involvement of the federal government in the economy.
Most of these economic policies create precedents but do not necessarily establish a different fundamental structure. They are reversible. Banks are already planning on paying back stimulus funds and General Motors could buy back the government’s shares at some point in the future. The day-to-day need for health care and the intimate nature of its benefits, however, would make the program even more untouchable than social security or Medicare.
This would be bad not just for the Republican Party, but for the country as a whole. Instituting yet another untouchable entitlement spending program only further endangers the nation’s finances, in addition to endangering the quality of our healthcare.
Americans should be wary of the Democratic health care proposal. Obama is using the economic crisis as political cover for a radical shift in the American healthcare system, just as he radicalizes the rest of the economy through the government takeover of General Motors and the attempt to regulate salaries with a federal pay czar.
It’s happening about how Norman Thomas said it would. The Democrats are selling their vast expansion of government to the voters as a moderate, liberal measure to rescue the nation from financial distress. In reality, it’s a big step toward a European-style big government social democracy.
I don’t believe that Americans really want this vast expansion of government power, but the Democrats have disguised it as a moderate solution to a serious problem. We must pull back the veil and expose the Democrats’ health care plan for what it truly is.
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