Feb 19, 2014 2 min read

Eleanor Roosevelt’s United Nations Declaration of Human Rights includes health care, yet she was not a socialist. Neither was John Dewey or liberal Democrats today. The most prominent local socialist was a coal miner born in Brittany, Charleroi’s Louis Gouziou, who withdrew in 1916, perhaps over the war in France. Until his death, however, he continued to lead the American chapter of an international human rights movement and, unlike his critics, be a model of decency.

Republicans might not see anything funny in the cartoon that appeared on the Feb. 11 editorial page showing President Obama wearing a red-starred beret and goatee, “30 years ago in a sleeper cell training camp in the Kenyan jungle.”

His five steps on “The Road to Socialism” begin with regulating snack foods and forcing people to buy efficient light bulbs. Step 3, “subsidize corporate health industry” results in “Boom! Revolution!” and the dictatorship of the proletariat!

“No, no, comrade,” says a second revolutionary reading from Karl Marx, “First subsidize the corporate health industry, then regulate corn chips.”

Absurd and ironic, the cartoon lampoons the Republican campaign to end Obamacare through fear and ignorance of socialism. Obamacare is expensive and doesn’t cover everyone. Too scary for Republicans and Democrats, the solution, socialized medicine long practiced in other countries, is not on the table.

American exceptionalism has made us a pitiful, dangerous, international laughingstock.

Jim Greenwood

Washington