The article goes into the history of the label as applied to BHO and the disingenuous way it has been denied, something we have seen here at APS. The author then goes into what has been meant by the term "socialism" over time, its various incarnations, and the urges underpinning the socialist mindset. The author comes to the conclusion that BHO is a socialist in the mirror image of the way the original neoconservatives were conservatives.
[The article is much too long to post in its entirety. It is worth every minute one spends reading it, so I would heartily suggest mashing the link. I will post only tidbits.]
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/what-kind-of-socialist-is-barack-obama--15421?page=allWhat Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama?Now, when conservatives dare to suggest, tentatively or otherwise, that Obama or his party might be in the thrall of some variant of socialism, they are derided for it...
...Newsweek editor Jon Meacham mocked the president’s critics for considering Obama to be a “crypto-socialist.” By these lights, socialism is a very sophisticated, highly technical, and historically precise phenomenon that has nothing to do with the politics or ideas of the present moment, and conservatives who invoke the term to describe Obama’s policies and ideas are at best wildly imprecise and at worst purposefully rabble-rousing. And yet when liberals themselves discuss socialism and its relation to Obama, the definition of the term “socialist” seems to loosen up considerably. Only four months before Meacham’s mockery of conservatives, he co-authored a cover story for his magazine titled “We’re All Socialists Now...”
...Surely if fans of President Obama’s program feel free to call it socialist, critics may be permitted to do likewise...
...But is it correct, as an objective matter, to call Obama’s agenda “socialist”? That depends on what one means by socialism. The term has so many associations and has been used to describe so many divergent political and economic approaches that the only meaning sure to garner consensus is an assertive statism applied in the larger cause of “equality,” usually through redistributive economic policies that involve a bias toward taking an intrusive and domineering role in the workings of the private sector...
...By concentrating on the notion of reform rather than revolution, progressives can work to attract both ideologues of the Left and moderates at the same time. This allows moderates to be seduced by their own rhetoric about the virtues of a specific reform as an end in itself. Meanwhile, more sophisticated ideologues understand that they are supporting a camel’s-nose strategy...
...often goes by the name of “social democracy,” though it is perhaps best understood as an American variant of Fabianism, the late-Victorian British socialist tendency. “There will never come a moment when we can say ‘
now Socialism is established,’” explained Sidney Webb, Britain’s leading Fabian, in 1887...
...The political virtue of Fabianism is that since “socialism” is always around the corner and has never been fully implemented, it can never be held to blame for the failings of the statist policies that have already been enacted. The cure is always more incremental socialism. And the disease is, always and forever, laissez-faire capitalism...
...“Social-ism” is something different. It is an orientation, a way of thinking about politics and governance—it is oriented toward government control but is not monomaniacally committed to it as the be-all and end-all...
...But at a far more important level, “social-ism” is a fundamentally religious impulse, a utopian yearning to create a perfect society unconstrained by the natural trade-offs of mortal life...
...one of the key liberal techniques for fending off accusations of socialism, and discrediting those who make the charge, is to equate Marxism with socialism and then insist (often correctly) that since liberals aren’t Marxists, anyone who says liberals are socialists is a fool or a partisan ideologue...
...The contribution Marxism made to the socialism from which it arose was to offer a pseudo-scientific gloss to the ill-defined urges and impulses of those who despised the rising system of capitalism and the growing middle class to which it gave birth...
...But at its core, socialism remains a rationalization for a fundamentally tribal and premodern understanding of economics...
...very few successful socialist propagandists ever bothered to focus on the empirical case for socialism...its preachers testify about “social justice,” “humane policies,” “fairness,” and “equality.” In short, socialism—be it Marxist, Fabian, nationalistic, progressive—is merely one of many pseudo-empirical rationalizations of the deeper psychological impulse...
...It’s worth recalling that both Marx and Engels came to their socialism via their atheism, not the other way around. But in America in the early 20th century, “social-ism” most powerfully manifested itself as Christian progressivism...
...The promise and purpose of “social-ism” are most obviously on display in the worldview of environmentalism...
...Obama is no Marxist. This is a point lost on some who like to highlight the president’s indebtedness to the ideas of the late radical Saul Alinsky, who was no Marxist either. Rather, Alinsky was a radical leftist and a proponent of “social-ism” before Blair named it...
..T.R.’s [Teddy Roosevelt's] “super-socialism”: “It is not the Marxian Socialism. Much that Karl Marx taught is rejected by present-day Socialists. Mr. Roosevelt achieves the redistribution of wealth in a simpler and easier way”—by soaking the rich and yoking big business to the state. “It has all the simplicity of theft and much of its impudence,” the [
New York]
Times asserted...
...President Obama’s health-care plan is a pristine example of this approach...
...Obama still scoffs at the suggestion that he is a socialist largely to delegitimize his opponents...He reserves for himself the mantle of technocrat, disinterested, pragmatic, pushed to use the powers of government by the failings of his predecessor and the madness of the free market...
...Denying that you are an ideologue is not the same thing as proving the point. And certainly Obama’s insistence that ideology is something only his critics suffer from is no defense when stacked against the evidence of his actions...
...What do we call Obama’s “social-ism”? John Judis’s formulation—“liberal socialism”—is perfectly serviceable, and so is “social democracy” or, for that matter, simply “progressivism.” My own, perhaps too playful, suggestion would be neosocialism......as neoconservatism matured, it did become a distinct approach to domestic politics, one that sought to reign in government excess while pursuing conservative ends within the confines of the welfare state.
In many respects, Barack Obama’s neo-socialism is neoconservatism’s mirror image...
...While neoconservatism erred on the side of trusting the nongovernmental sphere—mediating institutions like markets, civil society, and the family—neosocialism gives the benefit of the doubt to government. Whereas neoconservatism was inherently skeptical of the ability of social planners to repeal the law of unintended consequences, Obama’s ideal is to leave social policy in their hands and to bemoan the interference of the merely political...
Whereas Ronald Reagan saw the answers to our problems in the private sphere (“in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”), Obama seeks to expand confidence in, and reliance on, government wherever and whenever he can, albeit within the confines of a generally Center-Right nation and the “unfortunate” demands of democracy.
As with Webb’s Fabian socialism, one will never be able to say of Obama’s developing doctrine, “now socialism has arrived.” On the night the House of Representatives passed the health-care bill, Obama said, “This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system. But it moves us decisively in the right direction.” Then, speaking specifically of another vote to be taken in the Senate but also cleverly to those not yet satisfied with what had been achieved, he added, “Now, as momentous as this day is, it’s not the end of this journey.”
Under Obama’s neosocialism, that journey will be endless, and no matter how far down the road toward socialism we go, he will always be there to tell the increasingly beleaguered marchers that we have only taken a “critical first step.” 
