Socialism vs. Christian"ism"

In the great debate over health care the terms "socialism and communism" manage to sneak themselves in in arguements agains universal health care.       I think that we do indeed support socialism when it benefits us.   The U.S. military is designed after a socialist structure.   We are proud of our military and we believe everyone needs care, also everyone needs to know their duty, and of course, everyone needs to be loyal and follow without question their leaders.  And went they don't follow, we know what happens!

I am tired of folks using labels to get folks against a good idea by using a term that  denotes "unamerican ideals."  In our day and age, what exactly is that, when the gap between the rich and the poor is widening at such a rapid rate that the middle is diminishing as I write.    Or when our President says something like, we need health care for the poor not for the children of the well off!"  What is he thinking?    Here's my position, should I child of a waitress have the same benefits of a child of a CEO of a Bank/Savings and Loan or one of those organizations we bail out when their in trouble?   The answer is every child should have the same benefits.  So either the CEO's child should have the same health care of the poor child or...?  Hmm

Michale Moore of "Sicko" the documentary of health care in the United States was on Oprah the other day and he and another advocate for universal health care said that those opposing universal health care should stop using the term socialist but rather we should say that we are adopting a health care system based on Jesus.   What a notion!   A health care system that includes everyone no strings attached.   A health care system that guides folks to good health.  Jesus rarely put conditions on people he healed, his basic request was "don't tell anyone what I did."   And of course, we did tell.  And who got angry, the people in charge!!!  And what happened?   Angry because he healed inspite of the rules.  Angry because it would take money out of their pockets for healing (wait a minute, that would be our current health insurance lobby!))  You get my point, Jesus healed, forgave, and saved many from death and when he did this they called him names including traitor, criminal and   Probably a "socialist or communist" (whatever the translation may have been in that day)

I was  in the company of Daniel Ortega several years ago when I was in Nicaragua.  He said that the US painted him as a communist and didn't believe in Jesus.  He told us that that wasn't true.    He did believe in Jesus.  His Jesus was not the Jesus that presented himself in the priests in the church who blessed the weapons in that killed his people.  His Jesus was the Jesus who went into the streets to help the oppressed.  Which Jesus do you vision?

So stop the socialist communist thing!   Let's start talking about a health care system that is based on Jesus' teaching.   So instead of socialism how about Christianism, its worth a try.