STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Michael Kazin: In 1961 Reagan warned of spread of socialism -- he was talking about Medicare
- Kazin: In opposing Obamacare, tea party echoes movements against Social Security
- He says they're usually backed by wealthy and predict catastrophe that never comes
- Kazin: Activists draw power as outsider, but often find citizens like their social programs
If we allow this awful measure to stand, predicted the conservative spokesman, "behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day...we will wake to find that we have socialism [and] we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."
This could be a tea party representative warning about the perils of Obamacare and willing to keep the government closed until it is delayed or repealed. But it was Ronald Reagan speaking back in 1961. And the program he viewed as the driving wedge of socialism was Medicare.
Michael Kazin
One can draw three important lessons from that statement and from the later presidential career of the man who made it. First, the fear that a federal program designed to help millions of people flagrantly violates the Constitution and speeds the nation toward tyranny has deep roots in modern U.S. history.
In the mid-1930s, the American Liberty League hurled that charge at Franklin D. Roosevelt for creating Social Security as well as for endorsing the right of unions to organize. In 1964, Barry Goldwater made a similar argument against the Civil Rights Act.
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