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Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock has heard some pretty nasty things about socialism lately. We think we understand it, based on the rhetoric we are deluged with every day. We hear that socialism is the road to communism, where the government dominates every citizen's private lives, telling us where to work, when to work, who we should marry, and so on.

The truth is quite different. Would it surprise you to know that America already is a socialist nation? Or that, in fact, capitalism depends on socialism to survive?

To find the real truth, and get past the misconceptions and propaganda, we Americans have to first realize that we don't really understand socialism at all. Then, we have to ask ourselves a question: What is socialism, really?

At its core, socialism is a vital need for every community, from cities and towns to great big continent-spanning nations. It is the pooling of resources into a communal fund in order to do something that no individual can do alone. Socialism, simply, is providing a service to a community at community expense.

In fact, every modern nation in existence today is socialist, to some degree or another. It is not a "necessary evil", as some would say, but an immense benefit; socialism is the entire reason that humans began living in communities to begin with, way back at the dawn of recorded history.

Despite what propagandists on the right have to say about it, even they are strongly in favor of socialism: every one of them proudly wears their pro-military status on their sleeve. That's right having a standing military is a function of socialism.

It is the veritable definition of socialism: the entire community pays for the service of soldiers because the entire community benefits. Providing for the common defense is one of the oldest applications of socialism. Even in the pre-civilized era of humanity, everyone who could contribute to a community's defense, did.

Socialism provides the mechanism by which nearly all of our most vital community services operate. Local fire departments, police forces, schools, libraries, highways, sewer systems virtually every aspect of community living, all those things that make life in a modern civilized society possible, are all the result of socialism.

Opponents of socialism are quick to bring up some of socialisms more questionable applications: inflated bureaucracies, excessive federal agencies, and committees without end. All of that government red tape is every entrepreneur's worst nightmare,

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