socialism is not inherently bad. why do people insist on making a pariah out of anything that remotely resembles socialist ideas? if you have any kind of tax sponsored services (fire, police, EMS, public schools, Welfare) then that's socialism at work! social security even has social in the name! i'm not saying we need a socialist govt, but we can not pretend that it is an evil scourge that is 'unamerican' or whatever when we have socialist programs entrenched in our society. this isn't the cold war days anymore, people. let's get into the now and use wotever it takes to make our society a viable one and see if we can outlast the Romans!