Socialism isn't totalitarianism, either.
I agree, though it has been in cases in the past.
When I say that people are nervous about the gov. controlling too much, I'm referring to the many social programs in social democracies... free education, free child care, and the gov. having much greater involvement in improving living conditions all around (environment, equality, etc.).
These all sound good, but would mean the gov. having its hands in more aspects of our lives than they already do. It's hard to trust them not to fuck it up.
Personally, I'd like to see universal health care. I can't help wondering how every other developed nation has it, but somehow we can't manage it...
But, I look at countries like the Scandinavian ones, where quality of life seems much better than here in many ways, and I have a hard time imagining us getting to that point. They're managing nations practically the size of one of our states. With the sheer size of our country, the huge variety of widely varying beliefs and cultural identities, I picture a social democracy here just being too big, bloated, and unwieldy.
