Oh, I was just drawing attention to your apparent one-dimensional definition of socialism, ReelBrew, that's all. :-) I think someone scared you badly with lurid tales of the socialist bogeyman, and you've never been the same since. I think you've got socialism confused with Stalinism or something.

It's not an all-or-nothing proposition, but you seem to think it is. Stalinism or Maoism is an all-or-nothing proposition, and so is the Mafia (a capitalist outfit in its basic approach) or the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis. Socialism is simply a part of any ordinary modern society. It is what you do with public funds raised through taxation, and it is impossible to have a functioning modern society without it. It can easily coexist alongside healthy and vigorous capitalism, and it does in almost every society presently existing on planet Earth. The government you vote for is itself a socialist institution, in that it exists by public funding and serves the overall society (or is supposed to, anyway). Even a Republican government is a socialist institution, for all that they will blather on about how "socialism" is a dirty word in their universe.

That's just PR, and it's a scare tactic that ignores the reality of the situation.

If I have misunderstood your definition of socialism, however, let's hear it.