Want real socialism? Look at Venezuela, an oil-exporting nation that is now dead broke even as the family of its socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez, rep… - Glenn Reynolds

[S]ocialism does have a siren call — essentially, the promise that if you vote for socialists, they’ll take stuff away from other people and give it to you. Since many people would rather have free stuff given to them in the name of “fairness” than have to work to get their own stuff, it’s never hard to round up votes with that approach. As the saying goes, a government that robs Peter to pay Paul can count on getting Paul’s vote.

[T]he history of the 20th century was basically that of the swath of destruction left across the globe by socialist ideas, from the international socialism of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union to the national socialism of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' Party.

A socialist is someone who wants politicians to decide who gets what; a "democratic socialist" wants the politicians to at least stand for election first.