I was worried to mention a pet theory of mine, but that article that **emarkp **posted shows that it was correct.
We should not forget what IMHO was one of the best vaccines against fascism and Communism in America:
The GI Bill.
Many forget that after WWI soldiers that had little to no benefits created a lot of unrest. Protests turned violent in Washington and fears of revolution grew, of course if former soldiers got a raw deal it would not be surprising that the USA would end up like Russia; at the same time: from the extreme right it was likely that many of those former soldiers were also approached by the American elites to begin to set up a fascist putsch.
Just after the end of WWII many feared the idea that either the extreme right or the left could get a hold of an even bigger army, that this time could be made out of 2.2 million disgruntled servicemen.
Of course, the main reason offered for passing the GI Bill was that we needed to keep that force employed, but it is clear that one powerful reason why to pass it was to prevent massive unemployment, economic depression or social unrest.
Guess why the bill was approved by just one vote?
Because racist congressmen complained that also black soldiers were going to benefit too…
Yes, my theory was that there was a racist component of the opposition to health care reform; however, I naively expected that this time it was not going to be a factor so I disregard it.
However, the article from IBD is attempting to raise racist emotions. Like MeanOldLady said: the article is actually saying that the health plan is an “underhanded scheme to take money back from whitey and give it to black people”.
It was bad enough that in reality the opponents of health reform are fighting to continue to limit the freedoms of the American worker.
It is worse now when the opponents of health care reform resort to virtually the same tactics of the opponents of the GI Bill. One has to wonder how the opponents can have peace of mind and sleep soundly every night.