A great many people are attracted to “socialism”, very loosely defined, since they see in it simple responsibility to our fellow human beings; they want to be nice, and socialists are nice.
This is not a fully incorrect view. One could certainly argue that some sort of basic “safety net” is not unreasonable, particularly in a wealthy nation.
The problem is that such people don’t understand the full logic of socialism, which is the logic of the eradication of difference. In homogeneous nations like Sweden, there is really no need for violence, since everyone basically belongs to the same group. In a strongly heterogeneous nation like the US, though, this is a problem, in that it necessarily leads to conflict between those who want to do the leveling, and those who are being confined to a smaller box, not of their choosing.
A paradigmatic example of this is the abortion issue. We have at least two strongly delineated lines of thought on this, but only one was victorious, and it achieved victory not through legislative action, but through the manifest abuse of the court system. The long term goal of all Socialists is the eradication of religion. In their own terms, the only reasonable system of knowledge is science, and anything not demonstrable is not scientific, and therefore doesn’t exist. This is the consequence of the abuse of the basic Vienna Circle protocol, which I won’t get into here.
Thus, the overarching goals are secularism, the eradication of historical cultural difference, and the leveling of incomes and social hierarchies. Now, even if these goals seem reasonable, the means are that of a hegemonic government, that can impose uniformity where difference is strenuously defended. This means that a system is necessarily put in place which can be abused, and abused thoroughly, as in the National Socialist regime.
In my own view, our Federalist system can tolerate the strains of localized tribalisms, but not the imposition of centralized cultural uniformity, which–the romantic dreams of silly people notwithstanding–is manifestly the aim of Socialism. If you understand Political Correctness, you have a passkey to an open cultural world anywhere in America, and damn near anywhere in the world, because they all think the same.
Our system, though, is broken into pieces. There was intended a very strong bias in favor of the States for EVERYTHING to do with day to day life. The Federal Government was for negotiating treaties with other nations, brokering disputes between States, and for providing for the national defense. Many considered even highway building to be beyond its proper reach, and if memory serves Andrew Jackson vetoed a plan to provide Federal funds for a road in Kentucky, to Maysville, if I am not mistaken.
Thus the proper place for the expression of what we might term Scandinavian sentiments is at the State level. I do not think that represents an overarching abuse of the system, even though I personally would not want to live in one of those States. Who knows, though, maybe it could work? Every State could adopt something similar.
But what we have today, with Social Security, Medicare, and the federal component of Medicaid (which, by the way, increased considerably, since much of the “Stimulus” money went to bail out bankrupt programs, such as that in California, and the Stimulus runs through 2014) are programs that we can’t opt out of, that provide money to the goverment that is promptly spent on many other things, and for which money is being borrowed on our behalf. It would be far, far better just to put the money in a bank than to trust the clowns in Washington with it.
Thus, if you want to be nice, and want to vote for nice people, make it at the State level, and let us get the Federal government out of the “nice” business, which it was never intended to take part in anyway.