Long live socialism

Here's the truth: I love socialism, and so do you, even though you may well neither know it, nor admit it. Matter of fact, so do most of the poseurs trying for the Republican presidential nomination.

They, however, want socialism only for the rich, and never call it that. Instead, they pretend what they call "socialism" is the problem. Well, if you want to see someone who lived a life free of socialism, go to Italy.

There, you can visit the body of the so-called "Ice Man," who was found after being frozen for 5,000 years. He was in his 40s; his teeth were decayed, his body was pretty much worn out, and, oh, yes, he had been murdered. But at least he didn't have to pay taxes.

Nor did he have police protection, schools, health care, roads or any agency in charge of seeing he wasn't sold tainted reindeer meat.

Well, he may have led a life Ron Paul would love, but the rest of us would probably prefer the sort of government intrusion that prevents someone from pissing in our drinking water.

Some of us are even so addicted to the road to serfdom that we think we should all have to pay taxes to make sure our kids are educated, our roads safe and people get at least minimal health care.

Well, enough of my subtle sarcasm. Libertarianism, the idea that you need virtually no government except perhaps for national defense, is a great philosophy for teenage boys from Bloomfield Hills. However, it doesn't work for grown-ups.

Right now, our economy is not in good shape. The national debt is not as large an immediate threat as the right-wing howlers in Congress would have you believe, but there is cause for concern. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, it was less than $1 trillion.

That is to say, the nation had run up a trillion dollars in unpaid borrowing since Thomas Jefferson scratched out the Declaration of Independence in 1776. However, since then, that deficit has ballooned to $14 trillion, and is now increasing by more than a trillion dollars a year.

Nobody disputes that. Nor does anyone dispute that a couple trillion have been added by the Obama administration, in a narrowly successful effort to prevent the Great Recession from turning into a second Great Depression, in which you might well starve to death.

Where you are being told the big lie, mainly by the Republicans, is in what the real cause of these huge deficits are, and what ought to be done about them. From Michele Bachmann to Mitt Romney, they will tell you that "entitlements" are too high. That we can't afford health care, and may not be able to afford Social Security.

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