Medicare and Totalitarianism

Sarah Palin¹ voiced an odd statement² about freedom being one generation from extinction. Turns out she was quoting that nutjob Ronald Reagan when he was fulminating about Medicare in the 1960s. Yeah, Medicare really ruined the country, didn’t it?

It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we’re going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.

When did he say this? It was on a recording he made for Operation Coffee Cup — a campaign organized by the American Medical Association to block the passage of Medicare. Doctors’ wives were supposed to organize coffee klatches for patients, where they would play the Reagan recording, which declared that Medicare would lead us to totalitarianism.

[From Raising the white flag of surrender to Medicare – Paul Krugman – Op-Ed Columnist – New York Times Blog]

Funny, if it wasn’t so sad³

Footnotes:

1. or her note-card writers [↩]
2. well, one of many [↩]
3. which could be said about most of the McCain-Palin campaign [↩]