Marxist Leanings

This is another episode in the ongoing e-mail conversations with Carol. My comments are in italics. Carol starts by saying,

Arthur! You are not reading my comments carefully. How in the world did you conclude that I am a Marxist? I told you that his theory has never worked in reality, so why would I support it?

I agree that such labels are a danger, in that they tend to overstate something. I suppose Karl Marx was the only true Marxist. Others, such as you and Pres. Obama have Marxist leanings. I know you say you don't support Marxism. I suspect it is because you intellectually recognize that it is a theory which has never worked. However,emotionally you adhere to many of the principles, because of your previous life experiences, as I have touched on in a previous writing. Marxism, Communism, Socialism are all minor variations of the same philosophy, which is that there should be a sharing of all assets. However, it starts to get a little uncomfortable for the group, when we bring in such matters as free love. As long as we confine our discussions to the underprivileged having the right to take over the assets of the overprivileged, the group is on safe ground intellectually and emotionally.

I told you that I have always been in management. See, this is one of the things that makes dealing with propaganda so difficult; because I am a liberal, I carry all the stereotypes you wish to place on me. It doesn't matter what I say or do, I am simply thrown into a group to which I do not and have never belonged (Marxists). If you read your first paragraph again, you will see it contains sarcasm and stereotyping.

You are technically correct about management. But from what I understand you have always been in a specific branch of management which involves government and its various manifestations. While there are similarities to management of private enterprises, which supply goods and services, there are also many significant differences. A private enterprise must make a profit in order to continue its existence. A government operation can continue its existence as long as it can maintain voter support, without any consideration for economics. At some point government management can also ignore voters indefinitely by even changing the rules of voting (see Banana Republics). Private enterprise cannot ignore its customers for very long.
I'm sorry if I showed sarcasm. I try to avoid that. However, I do engage in stereotyping primarily as an administrative technique to be able to separate right from wrong. I also recognize that there are many shades of gray.

As to the examples of persons deemed to be falsifying applications; if everyone has affordable access to health care, it becomes a moot point.

I am really sorry about your position on this one. You are saying that adherence to truth should only be a matter of convenience or importance as judged by (you?). It is difficult to know when absolute truths apply, but one should always try. Even the present state of questionable truth in the US government has allowed the Justice Department to recently hold three potential terrorists for lying to officials.
Let me also repeat that everyone now has affordable access to healthcare. The difference of opinion lies in the detail. Designate the cases where affordable health care was not available for significant health problem (eliminate hangnails). I just heard on television that 45,000 people per year die because of unavailable health care. The TV announcer merely repeated information from some study, apparently without any attempt to determine legitimacy, by looking at how the data was collected. Death is absolute and need not be questioned, except for its numbers. "Unavailable Health Care" is very iffy in its definition. Who says it was unavailable? On what basis was the judgment of unavailability made?


And, finally, I can separate opinion from fact.

I'm glad.