there is nothing new under the sun.

[rmd]

I've seen a bunch of "it will unleash socialist doooooooom" quotes regarding the launch of medicare back in the day that match the similar complaints about the ACA. But I hadn't seen the "jfk wanted for treason" flyer that was handed out in Dallas when JFK went to town, nor the full-page ad taken out in a Dallas paper for that day.

Comments

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

There's a certain strain of conservative that really, really doesn't like anything that smacks of socialism. They're hard to parse from this distance, because in our circles the default attitude is that society as a whole really should ensure that everyone's needs are taken care of. But our presuppositions are no more "rational" than theirs, they're just tastes in political economy. (The details are in Albion's Seed.)

One example is that serious "paleoconservatives" never were comfortable with Social Security. As someone noted, what allowed Reagan to head a conservative revival is that he was the first really prominent conservative to be comfortable with Social Security.

Among this strain is a somewhat out of control group who considers the absence of socialism to be the fundamental constitutional principle of freedom in the United States. Hence any perceived increase of socialism is seen to be treason.

In regard to JFK, though those posters are rather hyperventilating, they don't seem to be insane. If your political position is relentless opposition to Communism, and you see that as essential to preserving the nature of the US, you're not going to like any attempt to get along with Communists, because you'll see US vs. Communism as a zero-sum game.