Dictionary refresher

For those conservative pundits, columnists, and lawmakers who can't seem to go five minutes without crying socialism, I thought I'd give you a quick refresher on the definition of the term using easily available information found on many of the knowledge tubes in the intarwubs and dusty parchment and scrolls found in many book libraries. You know, before you hear Obama or Pelosi had sausage and bacon with their breakfast and start declaring it yet another slide into ultra-gay France-ishness on the way to a full blown Fourth Reich.

so·cial·ism n.
1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

So let's be clear here.

Things that are socialist: socialism, Alaska's state owned oil resources whose profits are redistributed among the citizenry, Venezuela, Britain's government run and controlled health care system.

Things that are not socialist: offering a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers, everything that you heard some Democrat did, that pigeon out on your balcony, generally anything that you say is socialist.

So next time you decide to work up a nice crazy froth about how some innocuous bill is going to lead to the US hot-tubbing with Hugo Chavez and the ghost of Karl Marx, stop, breathe, read this, and then let your reptile political instincts override your sense of logic and honesty. I just want you to know you're talking absolute shit, instead of now where you guys are just willfully ignorant of basic political theory. Thanks. We know return you to your regularly scheduled dick joke making and childish mockery.