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If immigrants ultimately voted mostly Republican, the Republican Party would be defending illegal immigration and Democrats would be demanding a wall and threatening sanctuary cities.

With this example of blatant hypocrisy and its implications in mind, we can frame a question: Why do we have a health system? We dont have a food system and people would die without food. We have mostly a free market for food, and the major health issue of the poor is not lack of food but obesity.

We have a health system because of the desire to create a socialist paradise and the demand of some incumbents to stay in office and consolidate as much power as possible irrespective of the outcome of the means.

We have a health system because of the constant propaganda and education of almost three generations of Americans that health is somehow different from all other life events and must be protected by a socialist state.

Many Americans still recoil at the idea, and so our elites keep coming up with health schemes that are bastardized bureaucratic nightmares so bad we can only assume they were designed to fail.

The major problem with health care in America is misplaced insurance. Surprised? Think about it. The elites solution: Nationalize health insurance and tie it up with hundreds of pages of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo.

This is like solving the problem of young boys throwing rocks at windows by making sure they have smoother rocks.

There are only two solutions to health care. 1) Socialize it, or 2) reduce government interference and turn it into a free market.

A socialized health system would create the largest bureaucracy on the planet. Keep in mind bureaucracies do process, they do not do outcomes.

Consider some basic realities. Those who can pay have the power to choose. In a free market that is you. In socialized systems, that is not you. Why would a person want an unnamed bureaucrat leafing through thousands of pages of regulations making decisions that influence your well being and maybe even your life?

Where are the feminists on this issue? They have demanded control over their own bodies. In a one-payer system, you have no ultimate control over your body. You control nothing except who you vote for, and as recent history has shown that changes almost nothing.

In a free market a person has control over what happens to their own bodies when they pay the bills, not when insurance is paid for by your employer and especially not when it is paid for by a faceless government bureaucrat.

The cost of health care is now outrageously expensive, mostly because patients have been led to believe someone else is paying the bills. Obamacare and the Republican plan simply compound this misperception and rachet up the cost.

In a one-payer system, it appears no one pays the cost directly, even though the cost will bankrupt the nation in the long run. The immediate cost will literally be taken out of our bodies, and on this July 4th weekend, out of our freedom to choose.

Dennis Clayson is a marketing professor at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Socialism and GOP health bill - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

Marxism appeared to have suffered a knockout with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989. It looked at the time like the postscript to Ronald Reagans long struggle against Communism, the struggle Peter Schweizer called Reagans War.

Now in what seems like the blink of an eye, Bernie Sanders has somehow become the most popular politician in the United States. By contrast with Reagan, here is a guy who has deeply felt what Vivian Gornick called The Romance of Communism. As we all have learned, Sanders merged the personal and the political when he spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. No honeymoon in Vegas for the class warrior from Burlington by way of Brooklyn.

In a recent column of great interest Joel Kotkin purported to explain Why socialism is back. Kotkin seemed to offer some political advice along with his explanation. These [leftist] economic positions could gain a majority, Kotkin counseled, but not if the progressives maintain their polarizing embrace of the most radical aspects of social identity and environmental policy.

The lefts identity politics replicates Marxist class struggle with racial categories. The lefts environmental policy serves up the rationale for state control of the means of production. They are both extensions of what the late Harry Jaffa the long arm of socialism. Kotkin advice to the contrary notwithstanding, they arent going anywhere. Kotkin to the contrary notwithstanding, under Democratic rule we are destined to get the full catastrophe good and hard.

The late Harry Jaffa cogently warned that the socialist temptation would survive the fall of the Soviet Union. If anything, the fall of the Soviet Union would enhance its appeal. The defeat of communism in the USSR and its satellite empires by no means assures its defeat in the world, Jaffa argued. Indeed, the release of the West from its conflict with the East emancipates utopian communism at home from the suspicion of it affinity with an external enemy. The struggle for the preservation of western civilization has entered a newand perhaps far more deadly and dangerousphase.

And here we are. Kotkin raises the question for the current popularity of of socialism or socialist remedies.

Socialism has certain permanent advantages over freedom. It preys on such enduring features of our character as ignorance and envy. See, for example, Publius in Federalist 10.

But what is behind the resurgence now? According to Kotkin, The primary driver is the global ascendency of neo-liberal capitalism, which in virtually all countries has accelerated inequality.

Americans, however, have rarely begrudged our fellow citizens their success so long as we have had something like an equal opportunity to achieve it. It seems to me that current barriers to opportunity have much more to do with the resurgence of the appeal of socialist bromides than what Kotkin calls neo-liberal capitalism except insofar as neo-liberal capitalism has erected such barriers.

Reaganite policies fostered the fantastic economic growth of its era. Reagan prevailed politically before the fall of the Soviet Union with the great economic growth that his policies fostered. We can achieve such economic growth again if we can lighten the governments heavy hand and continue to press the case for freedom against the claims urged on behalf of the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.

NOTE: For much more on Jaffas contribution on the point above, see a certain new book by our own Steven Hayward.

Continued here:
The socialist temptation - Power Line (blog)

Marxist professors, including some of recent notoriety, are preparing for the upcoming Socialism 2017 conference, where they will strategize to build the left and fight the right.

More than 1,500 professors, students, and left-wing activists from around the country are expected to gather in Chicago from July 6-9 in hopes of fighting injustice and oppression while resisting the political system that spawned Trump.

"It is ironic for professors to claim to support socialism and academic freedom and free speech."

[RELATED: Prof: To save American democracy, Trump must hang]

The four-day event will feature more than 100 meetings addressing topics such as misogyny, Islamophobia, immigration, racism, and much more from a socialist perspective.

A workshop called How Capitalism Works and How It Doesnt, for instance, will make the case that because capitalism is a system based on incessant accumulation based upon the exploitation of wage labor, it also therefore contains within it the seeds of its own demise.

Other offerings include Mapping the Enemy: What Is the Alt-Right?, Marxism and Cultural Appropriation, Strategies for Anti-Capitalists, and Shut it Down? How to Fight the Right.

[RELATED: Leftist Fight Club trains UCF students to fight Republicans]

Many of the lectures, including the opening plenary, will be delivered by university professors, some of whom have become the subject of recent controversies related to inflammatory political remarks.

Princeton University professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor will keynote the opening day of the conference with an address about Fighting Racism in Trumps America, during which she will deliver a speech that she had previously cancelled amidst backlash for comments she made about Donald Trump.

Speaking at Hampshire Colleges graduation ceremony in May, Taylor told graduating seniors that President Trump is a racist, sexist megalomaniac. Fox News subsequently picked up the story from Campus Reform, after which Taylor claims that she received more than 50 hateful, and sometimes threatening, emails that prompted her to cancel two previously-scheduled speaking engagements.

[RELATED: Prof tells grads Trump is a racist, sexist megalomaniac]

Syracuse University professor Dana Cloud will also be on hand to address a meeting sponsored by The Socialist Worker on the topic of Lies, Damn Lies, and Fake News, during which she will discuss the new presidents obvious disdain for the truth, which she believes has made right-wing outlets treat the credibility of government spokespersons with greater skepticism in their quest to do whatever they can to fuel the rights agenda.

Cloud came under fire earlier this month for a tweet that she sent out during a local March Against Sharia in Syracuse, which she counter-protested along with masked antifa demonstrators. As the tense standoff began to wind down, Cloud boasted that we almost have the fascists in[sic] on the run while calling for Syracuse people to come down to the federal building to finish them off.

Cloud has denied that her tweet was intended to incite violence against the conservative demonstrators, but the organizer of the march countered that from her perspective, it was clear that Cloud was trying to shut down free speech and incite violence against us.

[RELATED: Protest leader insists Syracuse prof was inciting violence]

Turning Point USA spokesperson Matt Lamb told Campus Reform that he finds it ironic for professors to claim to support socialism and academic freedom and free speech, pointing out that socialist nations such as North Korea and Venezuela are notorious for denying their citizens even basic freedoms while simultaneously impoverishing them through misguided government policies.

The government cannot be trusted to redistribute goods and services, Lamb remarked. This is why Venezuelans have to eat pigeons and dogs.

[RELATED: UMass courses promote resistance to capitalism, patriarchy]

Professor Paul Le Blanca longtime social justice activist from La Roche College who will be speaking at a Socialism 2017 workshop called Imagine: Living in a Socialist USAresponded to Lambs argument by contending that North Korea and Venezuela are not true models of socialism because they are subject to elitist rule, and thus are not an accurate indication of what socialism would look like in the USA.

Le Blanc told Campus Reform that he believes the U.S. could achieve socialism through a mass social movement that would be politically independent of any pro-capitalist politicians, even going so far as to suggest that socialism could arise through a Third American Revolution.

That won't be easy, he acknowledged, but we believe it is worth the effort.

Conference organizers are particularly invested in attracting college studentsto the event,encouraging them to plaster their campuses with posters and brochures promoting Socialism 2017 and offering a 50 percent discount on registration fees.

Campus Reformreached out to request comment from professors Cloudand Taylor, as well as the organizers of Socialism 2017, butno responses were forthcoming.

Follow Campus Reform on Twitter: @CampusReform

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Profs gather to 'fight the right' at Socialism 2017 conference - Campus Reform

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Presidium of the Second Northern Oblast Congress of Soviets, 1 August 1918. Seated: Uritskii, Trotsky, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, and Lashevich. Standing: Kharitonov, Lisovskii, Korsak, Voskov, Gusev, Ravich, Bakaev, and Kuzmin. St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences. (The Bolsheviks in Power, p. 325)

This article will be made available online on August 7.

Russell was both a liberal and a socialist, a combination perfectly comprehensible in his time, but almost unthinkable today. As a liberal, he opposed concentrations of power in all its military, governmental, and religious manifestations. But as a socialist, he equally opposed the concentrations of power stemming from the private ownership of the means of production, which therefore had to be put under social control.|more

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Bertrand Russell and the Socialism That Wasn't - Monthly Review

Conservatives routinely attack millennial leftists for getting their political knowledge from twitter or the Daily Show rather than actually reading a book.

This perception is validated with the reviews of Harrison Lievesleys book Why Socialism Works, posted on Amazon. Obvious lefties have praised the work in gushing terms.

One called it a gripping account of this complex ideology and awarded it 5 stars. Another reader praised the research involved:

A perfect introduction to the crux of the matter without any messing around. In depth research backs up the argument presented. Top notch.

Another reviewer by the name of Conor Burn complimented the readability of the work by saying, Im sure this will go down as one of the greatest texts ever written on the subject. I found myself furiously consuming the words on each page, totally engrossed in the text. It seemed I couldnt turn the pages fast enough!

But the problem is that the book is not a warm and researched endorsement of collectivism; on the contrary, it is a one sentence parody of it. The book, clocking in at 169 pages, has only the two-word attack against socialism listed on every page of It doesnt.

The reader celebration of this obviously unread book affirms the shallowness of fist-clenching leftists who, rather than cracking open a book, take their politics from slogans over research.

The reviewers on Amazon have taken the common charge lodged at book reviewers of, at best, only reading meager portions of the booktheyre usually accused of skimming the first and last chaptersto a new low.

The reviewers of Why Socialism Works have not even skimmed the book. Had they read beyond the cover, they would have attacked Lievesley for being unable to muster a reasoned argument, evidenced by his two-word sound bite, replicated 169 separate times against socialism in his book.

It is difficult to find a similar instance of extremists being so easily duped. The closest is probably the fraudulent tome, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which detailed a dubious worldwide conspiracy of Jews bent on taking over the world. The book was deemed factual enough for Henry Ford, a noted anti-Semite, to financially back the printing of 500,000 copies in the United States during the 1920s. Moreover, the Nazis used it as an elementary school book.

However fraudulent, disgusting, and racist its charges, Protocols was an actual book, rather than a two-word dismissal. And those who peddled the libelous screed had actually read it.

The same cannot be said for the reviewers of Why Socialism Works. For them, the very word socialism is education enough. Of course, the reviewers could be jokinga parody response to a parody book. But given the lack of sense of humor on the Left (evidenced by the all too-serious and homicidal-minded Rosie ODonnell), the more probable conclusion is that they did not even bother to read the book.

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Why Socialism Works? - The Liberty Conservative