Socialism as a conversation ender

In the debate over healthcare and other various government initiatives over the last year, I've heard and read many people using the word socialism as a shorthand way to say that a given policy or candidate was unacceptable. The underlying thought is that socialism is at odds with the American spirit, and therefore a socialist policy is out of the question in this country.

This underlying thought is false. If we define socialist as describing redistributionist policies in general, then it is clear after little reflection that we already have many socialist policies which the American public would be loath to terminate. Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, progressive income tax, etc. are all examples of redistributionist policies which have come to be considered mainstream in this country. Certainly there are strict libertarians who would like to eliminate these policies, but they represent a small fraction of the public, and therefore can't be said to reflect American sensibilities in terms of public policy.

So the real question isn't whether any particular policy or candidate is socialist or not. The real question is how socialist do we want to be as a nation? Some individuals would prefer for us to be less socialist, and I would expect those individuals to favor cutting entitlements and flattening the tax burden across different income levels. Others would like us to be more socialist, and I would expect them to favor greater intervention by the government to solve society's ills, e.g., by helping individuals who don't have health insurance. Whatever one's opinion on this matter, it is not adequate to declare something socialist and then sit back silently as if that settles the matter. We need to intelligently find our spot on the spectrum of policy choices by evaluating the trade-offs of individual decisions and then making our choice.