Thankfully we have had a mild form of socialism in the USA for over a hundred years. Socialism is what keeps our citizens from being ripped off and exploited by our rigged system of crony capitalism that is really best defined as a kleptocracy. Socialism is what has kept the working class from being ground into the dirt the way it was back in the late 1800s under John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and the rest of the robber barons. Socialism is what got rid of child labor and union busting goons that used axe handles and guns to further gold old American capitalism. Socialism is also the reason Scandinavian countries have a higher standard of living than we do as well as less crime, less poverty, free college and health care and happier people. Socialist countries don’t fritter away their wealth on foreign misadventures and incursions either because unlike our system of economics there’s no war profiteering in socialism.

There are a lot of socialist countries that regulate the personal lives of their citizens far less than we do like Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, even countries that we think of as conservative such as Germany and England, tend to have less restrictions on personal freedom than we do. There isn’t any place in Europe or Scandinavia where the exposure of a single female breast for one second on national television would cause a large part of the population to be offended and force the government to consider greater regulation to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

Karl Marx said: "Democracy is the road to socialism." Marx hated socialism even more than he hated capitalism because he feared the success of a mild form of socialism in the West might help lead to the failure of communism because it provided a safe haven for discontents and poor workers from eastern Europe. Of course he was right. This is because Marx knew that social justice does indeed require socialism.