The Soviet Union offered its citizens “social rights” while denying them their civil rights. The commissars entitled Russians to government health care, education, job security and housing. They regulated society to banish social inequity, exploitation by the rich and to meet survival needs. Of course, the commissars had to eliminate bourgeois rights and freedoms: They inevitably give rise to “evil” differences in socio-economic status.

The Sun Journal editorial Dec. 29, embracing forced purchases of health insurance, mirrors the above defense of government limitation of private choices: Unregulated citizens inevitably mess up the tidy social package their betters among the elite would fashion for them if only they’d relinquish their freedoms to the state.

Alone among the health insurance bill’s provisions, forced coverage makes sense to you. The logic builds as follows: Since everyone wants the benefits of government controlled universal health care, force everyone to pay! For me, the clarity of that logic only seals my opposition to the larger effort itself. It begs the question: Just who thinks currently configured reform bills make any sense?

For socialized medicine, American-style, to make sense to 60 senators, Reid, et al, offered bribes, kickbacks, unrealistic operational assumptions and special exemptions. To make sense to you, Democrats offer the forced conscription of unwilling citizens.

None of it makes sense to me. I prefer my civil rights and freedoms over the best these senators could ever offer me in exchange.

The “best” provision you can point to? Pathetically, another instance of misguided, counterproductive government bullying.

Leonard Hoy, Greenwood