The FUD-button use of socialism is another paper tiger being waved around by the fear and hate crowd.

What the problem is   is that our social network is falling apart largely due to the untrammeled avarice of unethical business practices used to forward simple greed.

Repairing our network is not socialism. When FDR did it it was MORE socialistic than some earlier periods (such as the Golden Age of robber barons and Tammany Hall). Hell, for that matter, the Constitution was mORE socialism than the monarchic dictatorships that preceded it.

The problem is that Manichean lizardbrains think things are either A or B, without noticing that they can be a little more A or a little more B. For example, Mister Bush is distinctly MORE fascistic than, say, Jimmy Carter or Wm Clinton were in his management style. Not to say he was an absolute fascist--just that he slid things in that direction.

There is a continuous gradient of degrees from stark extreme capitalism to stark extreme socialism, and the US has typical bounced around the middle of that spectrum.

Maybe someone should point out that the Interstate Freeway system so beloved by truckers and trippers everywhere was a socialist exercise? So was the TVA and the Manhattan Project.

A