system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Having a military is just as "socialist" as having universal healthcare.

In short: if the US government is willing to spend billions of dollars on defense, and millions of Americans support this defense spending, why do many of the same people fight so adamantly against the government paying for healthcare?

A lot of us don't agree with defense spending (myself included). A lot of this "War on Terror" has just proven to be an inconvenience for ordinary citizens - just look at the TSA and what we have to deal with to get on board a plane. Others are blatant violations of privacy, such as NSA surveillance.

Some people disagree with how universal healthcare should be run, and wouldn't support it with their hard-earned dollars. But if a similar number of people don't support sending our troops abroad to fight wars that almost nobody has an interest in.

To be clear: I strongly support implementation of healthcare as it is executed in the Nordic countries (and I advocate the Nordic model in general). I'm not saying only socialist countries should have militaries, but I do say that the implementation of national armed forces and healthcare are too similar from a purely economic perspective to support one and oppose the other. (Socially and politically, of course, they are radically different.)

[edit] I'm not saying that a national military is a socialist idea, either. Just that there's a good similarity. Hence the quotes around "socialist."
gpt
What you provide to people, they have reduced need to provide for themselves.  If the government provides military defense, playgrounds, or three-toed-sloth-crossings, socialism-haters don't get bent out of shape because they weren't really rooting for people to pick up rifles and head to Iraq, build sloth crossings, or build big playgrounds.  On the other hand, if you provide food or health care it upsets them because they think a big part of what you should do in life is work to afford food and health care.

Additionally, socialism-haters worry that the government will make benefits contingent on conformity.  If it's providing you with food and health care, it can say "food stamps not for druggies" or "no lung surgery for smokers" or "Tea Party activists are slightly more likely to be denied for a second knee replacement".  Whereas the government can't very well defend only some people from invasion, or only allow correctly-voting people on the playgrounds.