"Socialism" – as in the police, the fire department, the USPS, the school system, the university system, Social Security, Medicare, healthcare from the "Marketplace," unemployment, the FDIC, roads, bridges, and highways, public water and sewer systems, gas subsidies, oil subsidies, corn subsidies, farm subsidies, corporate bailouts, the bank bailouts, the auto bailouts, etc., ad infinitum.

I'm sorry. That word is a boogey word to scare the poor and hardworking taxpayers into NOT fighting for our fair share of the pie. It's used to keep we of the 90% paying for all the corporate socialism that makes the mega-rich possible. The mega-rich couldn't be mega-rich without all their mega-tax breaks and corporate-level subsidies – i.e., corporate welfare. While the 90% are busy cutting our own throats by decrying "socialism" whenever it's applied to us, the politicians and mega-rich are making us pay for their own particular brand of corporate socialism.

Socialism doesn't hamper our personal freedoms. Europe is free. The UK is free. Lots of places with democratic socialist systems are free.

It's communism which strips freedoms. Americans were convinced by the communist boogeyman that socialism was the same thing. But, socialism is just socially minded political structure. It can be communist – as in the FAILED communist socialism of the former USSR which advocated the Marxist ideal tearing down systems of capitalism. Or, it can be democratic as in the democratic socialism of France, Germany, the UK, etc. Socialism in the democratic context is a structure for aligning political and social systems for the needs of the broader society.

Ideals evolve as we people adapt and evolve. "Socialism" does not have that universal meaning ascribed to it by Marx. It is far more adaptable and nuanced than Marx's narrow anti-capitalist extremist ideology. It never really meant that.