So what's socialism? If McCain's most recent definition is correct, both candidates are socialists: McCain says that Obama would take money from the rich (by.... So what's socialism? If McCain's most recent definition is correct, both candidates are socialists: McCain says that Obama would take money from the rich (by raising taxes on those making over $250,000 per year) and give it to the poor--but McCain would, as the Republicans have been doing since Reagan's time, take money from working folks and give it to the rich. And not just by extending Bush's tax cuts for billionaires; the right has consistently sought to prevent labor from exercising any power whatsoever to set its own prices, while giving owners and managers free rein to grant themselves huge salaries, immense bonuses (whether their companies perform well or not), and the notorious Golden Parachutes.

So by McCain's definition, both are "socialists," and McCain is the more extreme one.

But of course, redistribution of wealth is not socialism, but a goal of every practical government; only the extent and direction are in dispute in this race. "Socialism" is government ownership of the means of production, and by that definition, both candidates are socialists, since they voted for the Billionaire's Bailout,which included the provision that the government take an ownership share (albeit non-voting) in the companies it gives money to. This is socialism, and also eminently sensible.

Republicans would prefer to get your tax money free of any obligations to you whatsoever, but they'll vote for actual socialism rather than let the loot slip out of their hands entirely.

Socialism can be good or bad, depending--just like capitalism. Holland, France, and most Scandinavian countries have semi-socialist economies, and they also have productive, healthy citizens, a high rate of innovation, and plenty of personal wealth. They don't have as many billionaires as the US does per capita, but the middle class is bigger and wealthier than here. And they even have time to enjoy their money: they work less, and live longer, than Americans

So socialism isn't so bad, if you do it right and don't pretend you're doing something else.

What is bad is fascism.

What is fascism? According to Benito Mussolini, its inventor, it is best described as "the melding of state and corporate power."

The ownership of government by business.

That, my friends, is really, really bad. In another form, it was called feudalism--something any wage-serf working at Wal-Mart or its ilk would understand.

Feudalism depends on the people having little access to direct communication with each other, so that they receive their world-view from their masters above them. Suburbs, drenched in televised Fox news and drivetime hate radio, support this; cities--where people meet each other on the street, on busses or trains, in squares and parks, in coffeehouses and bars--allow folks to talk with each other in what sociologists call "unmediated discourse."

This is why the right distrusts cities, distrusts transit, distrusts urban diversity, distrusts the mixing of all sorts of folks, distrusts freedom for gays, or immigrants, or artists, and even distrusts librarians, or anyone else who has not proven to be a good follower.

Socialist the candidates may or may not be (and neither one is), but if you love cities and freedom, well, today's Republican party is no longer the party of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator--who was a great Federalist as well.