A little ranting...

For those of you who don't follow my cousin Becca's blog, I just thought I would re-post a portion of her post....

The one that has been getting my goat lately has been SOCIALISM. Let me help sort this out for us. First: Socialism is an economic system, not a political system. Therefore, our country would not be transitioning from a democracy to socialism. If such a transition to socialism was occurring, we would be transitioning from capitalism to socialism. Second, Marxist theory classifies socialism as characterized by unequal distribution of goods and compensation according to work done. Let's take health care reform, then, as an example. A chief complaint about this reform is that people who do nothing get something, but socialist theory clearly states that people who do stuff get stuff, and people who do nothing get nothing. So while health care reform might be a big steaming pile of you-know-what, it just isn't socialist.Count Henri de Saint-Simon is regarded as the first individual to coin the term socialism. He advocated the creation of a society in which each person was ranked according to his or her capacities and rewarded according to his or her work. Economically, socialism denotes an economic system of state ownership and/or worker ownership of the means of production and distribution. There are elements of both of these principles in our society now, and they were in place long before our current president. Think about Medicare, Medicaid, our PUBLIC lands system, and our system of PUBLIC education, just to name a few. I don't necessarily think that all of these programs are run well, but they have been around for decades, yet it is only recently that talking heads have started screaming "SOCIALISM!"My final note comes from Che Guevara, and I'll quote:
"Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity, both at an individual level, within the societies where socialism is being built or has been built, and on a world scale, with regard to all peoples suffering..."See? We Americans could never be socialist because we don't give a **** about anybody else.The moral of the story: Go ahead, call the state of affairs in this nation a joke, call our President delusional, say that Congress has their heads in dark places, and say that the proposed health care plan will never work. Just don't call it Socialism. It isn't.

Thanks Becca...I totally get it, you rule.

I just want to say, that maybe some of you are sitting out there and thinking, "Boy, I sure wish I had healthcare, that would sure be nice..." or maybe you are thinking, "Boy, that grand I've been dropping every month on my health insurance would sure go a long way in the grocery store/towards my kid's dance lessons/get some new shoes/car or mortgage payment..." Or maybe you (like my friend Annie) have great health insurance until you get real sick and have to have surgery...and your health insurance won't cover you anymore...

Whether you are republican, or democrat you can agree that health insurance reform is needed. Every other well developed nation has better health care than we do, and it costs less...that alone should tell you there is a better way to do this. And maybe Obama's plan isn't perfect, but what plan ever proposed by the government for any reason is ever perfect? I can't understand all this fear mongering about socialism and our country going down the toilet, and all our children are going to have to pay for it for thousands of years....because who wouldn't pay for it? You already pay for it! If you knew your child or even somebody else's child or your sister or cousin or grandparent or even your next door neighbor was going to have health insurance, was not going to be denied coverage, was going to be able to afford life saving surgery/chemo/prescription drugs and not go bankrupt and lose their house...who wouldn't pitch in? Who wouldn't try to pull together to help them? This is healthcare, not gun law, not abortion rights... This shouldn't be a grand debate, for me this one is easy.