To the editor:

A picture is worth quite a lot of words. The photograph of the protester in Washington carrying a sign labeling President Obama as fascist finally made me realize what Rep. Lynn Jenkins and our esteemed senators and the honorable ex-Gov. Sarah Palin have been trying to tell me. It’s simple: Government-sponsored health care equals socialism and fascism.

I call on Jenkins to lead the way to end socialism-fascism in our country. She should insist not only on preventing the government-sponsored option in health care reform. She should demand that we dismantle Medicare and Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Veterans Administration system. The National Institutes of Health, the Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control must go. The Environmental Protection Agency tries to keep people healthy, so I suppose it should go. Oh, and the Food and Drug Administration. Surely the Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers could police themselves better than Big Government can.

While she is at it, she should insist that our local socialist-fascist institutions — the county health department, the Visiting Nurses Association (including hospice!) and the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center — should all be abolished. Let’s make a clean sweep for life, liberty and the pursuit of keeping what’s yours and forget about the rest.

Or maybe not.