Ethics

Tea Bagger Rhetoric in American History

By Ed Brayton

Hanna Rosin points out at Andrew Sullivan's blog that the rhetoric we're hearing about health care reform now -- this is the end of all freedom! -- was identical to the rhetoric heard nearly 50 years ago when Medicare was created. In fact, here's none other than Ronald Reagan making that exact claim back then:

If this program passes, one of these years we will tell our children and our children's children what it was like in American when men were free.

And:

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism, or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on August 31, 2009 (boomark / email).