ROGER SIMON: America Lives Under Healthcare Fascism.

Attributed to V.I. Lenin is a statement to the effect that the fastest and surest way to communism or socialism—it varies according to the citation—is through the healthcare system.

The statement seems to be apocryphal. I say “seems” because no one appears able to locate it.

But, like so many possibly apocryphal statements (“A republic if you can keep it” and so forth), does anyone doubt its meaning is really true? That’s the reason such remarks continue to haunt us.

Since this is Rosh Hashanah, I will put it the way the old Jewish bubbes (grandmothers) did when I was a child. Apply the proper Yiddish accent: “So long as you’re healthy, it’s the main thing.”

And, to be clear, when I assert we live under healthcare communism, I don’t mean communism the way ye olde Karl Marx dreamed it up. I mean something even worse, more insidious—total state control of our lives, who wins and loses, who profits and who fails, who becomes a billionaire and who a pauper, even who survives… in other words communism as practiced in today’s People’s Republic of China and, increasingly, the United States.

You may not be interested in the gleichschaltung — but the gleichschaltung is interested in you.