My first response to all that is “read Svetlana Voreskova’s response and pin it to your wall.”

Do you want to bestow a One True Meaning on any other words, in contravention of a clearly-established current use?

Interesting you should bring up Noah Webster, because that’s really the crux of my argument. There are dictionary definitions of things, and then there are “common usages”. Most times the two are the same. In politics, the two often differ. When they differ, it’s on us to figure out WHY they differ; there are generally two reasons. The first possibility is that the definition is evolving; the second is that somebody is trying to advance a narrative.

After all, very few people who are accused of “homophobia” (for example) are actually AFRAID of homosexuals, which is what the dictionary definition would apply.

What annoys me is your arrogance in declaring that you have the One and Only Meaning, contra those silly liars who make up all the European Socialist parties.

You can be annoyed all you like. The POINT is that “socialism” has a a very definite meaning, which is “the state controls the means of production”. It is of no benefit to anyone, except a socialist who wishes to foist that ideology on others by wrapping it in a less toxic wrapper, to blur that definition.

Whereas the Socialist parties of Europe would be horrified if you tried to convince them to follow the program Svetlana described.

Probably so. We’ll get to the issue you’re missing WRT to these “socialist parties” in a bit.

You can argue that their policies will eventually lead to totalitarianism.

And that’s the coup de gras, here. I wrote a few days ago about the “Western” tendency to decompose …. well, everything …. into its component parts, then pick and choose the ones they want to keep, kind of like they were eating at a cafeteria buffet.

Political ideologies don’t work like that. They are integrated wholes. You want to be a socialist, you take it all, even if you don’t want it all, because trying to do it IN PART will fail, and eventually force you to make a decision: either abandon the attempt, or put a gun to the face of the people. The former choice is never chosen, it should be said.

And if you want to claim that they secretly believe all this totalitarian stuff, and that you can somehow peer into their minds, you’re no better than those who scream about Trump’s “dog whistles”.

Nope, didn’t make that argument. I believe that most American and Western “socialists” are naive individuals who think that you can have a state which owns PART of the means of production, but not all, and that the ideology does not affect human rights as we define them in the Bill of Rights. They are wrong. They are marching towards a cliff with a blindfold on.

And, their leaders generally know better, btw.

Finally, where is your evidence that Nazi Germany was doomed to a badly misallocated end? It didn’t start off like the USSR, why do you think it would have to end like the USSR?

The evidence is every other state that’s every tried it.

But it’s just factually wrong to suggest that heavy state intervention in the economy is naturally doomed to fail under all conditions.

Well, how are you defining “fail”? To me, any economy which is failing to deliver a rising standard of living to its citizens has either failed, or is in the process of failing. These are large entities, and dramatic collapses like the USSR are not all that common. “Failure” is usually an extended period of time when the economy underperforms, and a sometimes longer period of time until the people realize its underperforming because of economic decisions made the federal level. At which time the pitchforks come out.

Was the US, hovering at 1%+ GDP growth rate for all those years, when the national average during Bush/Clinton was > 3%…….succeeding? Were standards of living rising over the last decade?

Were we failing? And if so….you don’t think that after the events of 2008……we’ve NOT had heavy state intervention in the economy?