Ok, dust off your history books.  I've got a quote and a story for you. 

Let's start with the quote from Norman Matton Thomas (Nov 29, 1884-Dec 19-1968).  He was a leading American Socialist, pacifist and six time Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.  He was an ordained Presbyterian Minister in 1911.  As a candidate for President of the U.S. Thomas said in a 1944 speech:

""The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism", they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." He went on to say: "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform."  

Now let's have a history lesson.  Sent to me by a friend; not sure if it's true or not but interesting to think about nonetheless.  Here's the story:

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The majority of the class had insisted that socialism was a better system as no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little. The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.