On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) gave his long planned
speech on Democratic Socialism, invoking great American leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and reminding everyone that some of the most popular social programs we have today — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — were all once labeled socialist and aggressively opposed by monied interests, who FDR called “economic royalists.”
Not only were social programs opposed and called socialism; so were any kind of laws or regulations that intervened with the “free market” for the betterment of society. “Unemployment insurance, abolishing child labor, the 40-hour work week, collective bargaining, strong banking regulations, deposit insurance, and job programs that put millions of people to work were all described, in one way or another, as ‘socialist,’” explained Sanders.
Of course, capitalists never come out and say that they want the government to get out of their way so that they can take advantage of workers or employ children or contaminate the water supply. They fear-monger about the threat of socialism and claim that as long as the government intervenes with their business, we can never have true freedom.
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young propagandist named Ronald Reagan issued such a warning in the early sixties, in opposition to what is seen as the predecessor to Medicare. “Federal programs,” Reagan warned, “will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until one day… we will wake to find that we have socialism.” Sounds familiar.
Today, we have “economic royalists” like the Koch brothers who, with their billions, fund the myths that have long sat in opposition to the social programs and market regulations that helped create the middle class. “A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value,” said Charles Koch in a
Wall Street Journal editorial last year, “In a truly free society, any business that disrespects its customers will fail, and deserves to do so. The same should be true of any government that disrespects its citizens.”
Koch puts forth the idea that an unregulated free market (or what he calls a “truly free society”) would solve most of society’s problems, and that any business — such as Koch Industries — that disrespects its customers will fail. There are many reasons why this is wrong. First of all, what is disrespecting a customer? Wrecking the environment? Violating safety regulations that end up killing innocent Americans? In that case, Koch Industries would
have surely failed in a “truly free society” by now. Except it wouldn’t. When a corporation is as big and diversified as Koch Industries, most customers don’t even know when they’re buying a product from them (you may very well be using a
Koch product in your own household), and “ethical consumerism” is, unfortunately, more myth than reality (consumers tend to look for the best deals before looking for products that comply with their moral code).
The truth, of course, is that an unfettered free market has disastrous affects on society, and that the freedom the Koch brothers and people like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KT) promote is a kind of barbaric freedom. This was witnessed back 2011, when Rand’s father, Ron Paul, was questioned at a GOP primary debate whether a healthy uninsured 30-year-old man who fell into a coma after something “terrible happened” should be treated or simply left to die. “What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself,”
Paul said, “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk,” which was followed by some fans shouting “Yes!” to the question of whether he should simply be left to die (which led Paul to backtrack, realizing the barbarity of his answer).
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