Here is another article I've been saving to post.

If you want to vilify someone politically, then you find a term you can associate with a politician or proposal that sounds like child molester. Child molesters are the lowest of the low in our society. Even in prison, child molesters rank way down low on the food chain. So, you find a term you can say with gravity and venom that both sounds ominous and is sufficiently complicated most people won't look up in a dictionary. That way people won't compare the actual meaning of the term you're using with the person or proposal the term is being associated with.

This is in keeping with what Mark Twain used to say. I think I'm quoting accurately here. "A lie can travel three times around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."

The vilification term de jour is socialism. The charge is the Obama Administration's policies are leading us to socialism.

Read this article by Harold Meyerson and see if you don't come away with a different point of view.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303207.html