I'm no Bernie fan, and I'll be voting Trump. However, I think it was unfair of the other candidates to load up on Bernie because of his positive comments on certain aspects of Cuba. Hitler energized the German economy, which had been in shambles. This was, in and of itself, a good thing. Facts are facts.
That being said, when you transfer more private enterprise to the government, those aspects become government-controlled and you are forced to comply with them under penalty of law. By definition, this becomes more authoritarian, which Bernie claims to aschew.
Agreed. You need to be careful with sweeping assertions such as about things like 'everything the government controls'. If you visit a national park, do rangers force you to go to re-education camp and sing of songs of praise for the government?
It's those sort of false generalizations that lead to irrational and false views. It's why when Reagan opposed Medicare, his argument was the same scare tactic that it will bring "socialism" that will make Americans no longer "free" people. That's *Medicare*, but it's the same argument they always use. He said:
"Government has invaded the free precincts of private citizens,"; the U.S. government owns "1/5 of the total industrial capacity of 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, most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it."
He then argued that the fact that Republicans defeated Truman's efforts at national healthcare proved the American people did not want it. Interesting logic that their corruption to the industry reflected the public wishes.
"behind it will come other government programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Norman Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism." Under this scenario, Reagan says, "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."
In other words, no one wants corrupt authoritarianism; Republicans use that fear to push their corrupt policies, with fear of 'communist totalitarianism' and promises of 'private sector inefficiency', despite evidence that again and again, the private sector does worse, less efficiently, in the industries where they compete, e.g. private prisons. That we have this perverse system where anyone who can make a buck if the government lets them, can afford to donate some of those profits to politicians; while citizens who oppose the wrong things tend not to give money to push for their position, and so the corrupt, profit-making policy wins over and over and over. That's the picture of the corruption of our system.
Note, Reagan's cries for the freedom of the American people were simply propaganda from a literal corporate spokesperson hired by the AMA to defend the industry profits by attacking Medicare. He'd rather see the elderly die without care and families bankrupted to provide it, than to let a paycheck pass him by.
His past should have caught up to him when he ran for president, over a decade later when all his predictions were proven false and Medicare was the other most popular program in the country, with Social Security, and he had to lie about what he'd done. As Wikipedia notes:
"In 1980 President Jimmy Carter, campaigning for re-election against Reagan, told crowds that: "As a traveling salesman for the American Medical Association campaign against Medicare, [Reagan] sowed the fear that Medicare would mean socialism and that it would lead to the destruction of our freedom." When the subject arose in a televised debate in late October, Reagan responded: "When I opposed Medicare, there was another piece of legislation meeting the same problem before Congress. I happened to favor the other piece of legislation and thought it would be better for the senior citizens. ... I was not opposing the principle of providing care for them..." Carter's campaign accused Reagan of "rewriting history", saying that there was no such alternative legislation."
