There does seem to be some weird obsession with health care in the US - health care being paid for by taxes is socialist, but roads, schools, the military and a billion other things aren’t. It’s like it’s singled out a some kind of sacred cow. What’s so* special *about it, as opposed to the aforementioned roads, emergency services, schools, etc.?
It’s just it’s always the example we Americans cite as proof of “they’re socialist and we’re not”.
Because it helps people, and Americans as a whole HATE helping others. As a nation, we admire ruthlessness, being “tough” and a willingness to trample others for our own profit; we despise compassion. And we tend to be too arrogant to think that WE might need help, or to hold a double standard that we personally ( and possibly friends and family ) are the only ones who deserve help.
And there’s plenty of opposition to funding schools as well.
I have not been retreating from anything, I am actively fighting it. Your extremely narrow definition of socialism is simply incorrect.
A definition, but not the one and only definition. I would love to see cites stating otherwise, because all my history and political philosophy books spend a good chapter on the socialist movement and all its offshoots, especially Marxism - but I have yet to see one that claims Marxism is the only accepted form of socialism.
Hardly the end… why use the predicate ‘state’ in your ‘terminological nomenclature’ description? Why offer a redundancy in your definition if ‘state socialism’ and ‘socialism’ have the exact same meaning? You keep attempting to put socialism into a box that it has never fit into.
You are the one claiming the one true Scotsman. I think it is on you to prove that your definition is the only accepted nomenclature. As I said above, I have not seen any texts that do so.
Then please tell me how the Socialist International are the Lutherans and the Communist Party is the true Catholic church when history, including their organizations own histories, give them the opposite roles. Marx co-opted socialism with the Communist Manifesto. Socialists retook the reigns in 1951 with the creation of the modern organization.
I am not claiming that social democracies are state socialism. That is a branch that is dead. Social democracies are the living breathing fruit of modern socialism, democratic socialism - which needs to be qualified as such to distinguish it from the dead. I am not trying to ‘rescue’ socialism from its history or any negative connotations. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an abomination and other socialists groups will have to bear the burden of its history, just as capitalism, Catholicism and others will have bear the atrocities committed in their names. I am merely trying to emphasize its present form and its positive connotations - those aspects that the right wing in America ignores when it criticizes socialism and commits the same fallacy you are - mistaking one part for the whole.
How do, say, roads not help people? Or police forces? Or any of the other gajillion public services paid for by the taxpayer? What makes healthcare so magically special that it must be singled out as “socialism”?
They help everyone at once, and denying them to the less wealthy would be impractical. And not even Americans can delude themselves that they don’t need roads.
Americans are authoritarian in inclination; they love uniformed authority figures. Especially when they spend a lot of time beating down the lower classes, or foreigners, or racial minorities, or gays. And THAT’S why the cops and soldiers are so popular.
Most of which are opposed by the typical American, as long as he thinks HE doesn’t need them.
It’s only singled out because the government presently doesn’t take care of it for most people. And because Americans find it easy to convince themselves that they’ll never need medical care. This is the same country where many people tried for years to pretend that AIDS only struck down the wicked.
How do you explain the levels of private charity in the US?