What is a Socialist and why is no one worried?

"While earlier generations of Americans understood the word [socialism] to describe a political system that coincides with the diminution of personal and economic freedom, too many Americans hear the word and simply think of it as an alternative economic system. They think Europe, with its pretty buildings and, until recently, high standard of living.

These same Americans do not think of the USSR and the Gulags, or the Nazis and the concentration camps, or the Norks and their concentration camps, or the Cubans and their political prisons, or the Chinese and their political slave labor. All of those, Americans would say, were communist, which is different, never mind that it’s not.

I can already hear some of you saying right now that Americans are proving, with their hostility to the Obama/Democrat agenda, that they hate socialism. But I’m talking semantics. They’ll say they hate “Big Government,” or taxes, or government inefficiency, or too much government spending, but they will be utterly blase about “socialism.” The word has lost its power. The underlying concepts may bother Americans, but to say Obama is a socialist probably has as much meaning as to say he eats potatoes."

Bookworm Room » What if they gave a socialist party and nobody cared?