Is this what socialism looks like?

If you haven't paid much attention to the right-wing noise machine over the past few months, well, more power to you. But if you have had the displeasure of keeping tabs of the paranoid, reactionary wing of the American political spectrum (tea baggers I'm thinking of you!), you would be hard pressed to not believe we have reached some sort of tipping point, from which there is no return. What am I referring to? Why, the great transformation of the United States into a great socialist nation. The numbers speak for themselves:

The above pie chart is from the Atlantic online and is demonstrative of the unsubstantiated criticisms of the Obama Administration. You see, movement conservatives, through the megaphone of Faux News and talk radio, have attempted to paint a picture of the new administration as far-left, radical, socialist, elitist, racist (oh the irony!), and fascist. What these folks fail to realize (or choose to ignore) are the following two points:

(1) The Obama administration, both in its policy objectives and rhetoric, has been, and will likely continue to be, largely moderate, much to the consternation of the left.

(2) To the extent that the Federal Government has taken a larger role (0.21% of total assets) in previously private corporations and banks, it is only due to the absolute necessity of doing so, as dictated by the current economic situation and the prospects of a further deteriorated economy in the near future.

Two more points I would like to make: (1) Liberals are far more pragmatic, and less doctrinaire, than conservatives, when faced with a problem to solve. (2) Liberalism, in both its classical form and its modern form (I hope to elaborate a bit on the absence of a distinction between the two, sometime in the near future), tends, by its very nature, towards moderation and pragmatism. This is clearly evident in the Obama administration thus far.