I’m so sick of right-wing politicians using “socialism” as a scare word — especially because they don’t know what it means. And sadly, neither do those who are scared by it.

Capitalism is when the economy has no government involvement. With capitalism, we have child labor, no minimum wage, no safety regulations, no regulations of food, no regulations of medicine — you get the idea. Almost everyone who hates “socialism” wants those things.

And the vast majority loves socialism when it includes social security and medicare for our elderly, a national health care program, aid to those who need it, and other governmental programs that help the individual.

These right-wingers have no problem with things like subsidies to oil companies, tax breaks for businesses, government loans that don’t have to be repaid — if it restricts business, they scream “socialism” but if it helps business, well, that’s just good government.

They just don’t like it when government helps people.

Watch and see — next time some politician screams “socialism,” they probably won’t have any idea what they’re talking about, like when Mitch McConnell said getting rid of the Electoral College would be “socialism.”

Part of the problem, of course, is that there were some terrible repressive countries that called themselves “socialist” and people associate totalitarianism (where the people have no power in government) with a government’s economics. You can have a free, democratic socialist country (like most of Europe and Japan and Canada, for instance). And of course, it’s not a black-and-white issue. We already have socialism in America (as demonstated above). The only issue really is how much do we want.

So don’t be scared by the word. Socialism is already here. We can debate how much of it we want, but it’s not a scary monster, no matter how much conservatives want you to believe.