The McCain campaign has been trying to smear Obama for being a "socialist" because he wants to use taxes to "spread the wealth around." Forgetting for a moment that the purpose of taxes is to spread the wealth around, I want to ask what’s wrong with being a socialist? I come from a long line of various stripes of socialists and I am proud to be one myself (I am a libertarian socialist). My friends and relatives who are or were socialists are or were fine human beings. They have worked in the public schools, struggled for labor rights, human rights, civil rights, organized public radio stations, food cooperatives and helped build pretty much anything else that includes the public good. Looking at the root of the word and the actions of my friends and elders I think it is fair to argue that a socialist is someone who cares about people more than about money. Using that definition I am proud to call myself a socialist.

I will let the reader define capitalism for him or herself.

Oh, and before someone starts a comment thread about all of the horrors done in the name of socialism (Cuba, USSR, etc.) let me just say that the genuine socialists I have known have struggled just as hard against the totalitarian Marxist-Leninist (i.e. Communist) regimes as they have against the injustices of the capitalist democracies. The thugs who often rise to the top of the Marxist-Leninist regimes deserve to be resisted as much as anyone else. I am proud to have among my family friends non-Marxist-Leninist socialists who were dissidents in Czechoslovakia or fought both the fascists and the Communists in Spain or, during the sixties, resisted the intrusion of Marxist-Leninist groups into the New Left while organizing against the Vietnam War and for civil rights.