Did Reagan Plagiarize the Old Man?

The First Essential Scary Truth

The national debate on healthcare reform has become a raging storm. The Democrats won’t listen to the Republicans who won’t listen to the Democrats. And neither party seems to be listening to the American public who want nothing to do with the bill that was debated in yesterday’s summit. Is this socialized healthcare finally come to our shores or just a bill to make the rich insurance companies and politicians richer? I wish I knew but it’s hard to find any substantive information in the middle of a screaming match between two groups of drooling, bought by kickbacks morons.

The American Thinker, a conservative website, posted a 50 year old video of Ronald Reagan speaking out against Socialized Medicine in the United States.

“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project,” he said in the recording. But he said most people in America oppose “socialized medicine” when given the choice.

“From here, it’s a short step to all the rest of socialism,” Reagan said.

The blog ends claiming ‘He was a prophet before, during and after his time.’

Personally, I believe at least one of Reagan’s famous lines may have been ripped off from the Old Man.

In 1971, my parents built the house in Bloomfield Hills. Architect Seymour Zate had sighted the house so it fit into the gently rolling hills in the property, not on top of them. This made the various contractors jobs far more difficult than usual. This also put my control freak father into micromanagement overdrive. He made two trips a day to check on the house’s progress.

The late spring found a brick laying crew putting up the southern wall of the house. During his morning visit to the job, Aron thought the wall was crooked and told one of the bricklayers to have it rebuilt. When he returned for the obligatory neurotic afternoon inspection, the crooked wall hadn’t been torn down. Instead, it was closer to completion. The Old Man found the foreman, an African-American gentleman, and demonstrated with the help of levels and a naked line of sight just how the crooked the wall had become.

“Mr. Zulu, that wall is straight,” the foreman said. Aron grabbed the guy by the forearm and dragged him so they were nose to nose with the wall.

“You’re Zulu, I’m Zola and I want this wall torn down,” the Old Man said.

Are you listening Mr. Gorbachev?