You should know after all this time I don't pay a lot of attention to "flaps" on either the Left or the Right. I don't watch Fox News any more than MSNBC. It causes brain damage.

The primary response I usually get on the subject of socialism is an attempt to disintegrate the concept itself so it can no longer be used. Newspeak 101.

The word has a real meaning. It has a long history, it has a large group of long-term advocates, and it has a set of specific and consistent ideas and political goals connected to it. And discussion of those specifics are where no Democrat dares to go.

Obama, and other modern Democratic leaders, believe the central government should have total control over every aspect of our lives. I can give dozens of examples to prove it (I've posted many here) and in all this time not one person has come up with a credible counterexample. Not one major point where the modern Democratic leaders and allies think the government should back off, and diminish its role, its power, and the wealth accrued to the State. The usual weak response I have gotten is "they only want to control things, not own them, so they're not officially socialist." Technically, that would be fascism, but it's dodging the issue anyway.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, and swims, eats, craps, flies, molts, lays eggs, and has the same genetic code as a duck...well, then.

But when I bring up the idea of socialism they have to neutralize the word and strip it of meaning until it lands in the same vaporous verbal category as "m-fucker." It's the only defense they've got.

P.S. you are fundamentally incorrect about "socialism" being the opposite of "fascism," although socialists have been trying to desperately sell that myth for longer than I've been alive. Their basic ideology and methods are almost identical, and if they fought in the past it was for no different reasons than two criminal gangs fight, one wearing red and one wearing blue.