The election season was incredibly heated as we crawled into the final weeks of campaigning. Sen.Barack Obama of Illinois (D) led in nearly all polls and nearly all swing states while Sen. John McCain of Arizona (R) was forced o go on the offensive, trying to cast his opponent as numerous bad things that a constituency won’t like. The contest resorted to a one-sided character attack by McCain while Obama was simply coasting to the finish line.

The problem is not the attacking—that is the general political cycle and most just learn to ignore it—it’s the content. Casting an opponent negatively usually means finding the one piece of legislation they voted on, one gaffe they made during a speech, and other such slips. John McCain has gone a different route: his campaign has resorted to casting Obama as anti-american, socialist and dangerous.

This Red Scare-esque campaigning stems from a few words he said to Joe the Plumber, the McCain campaign’s latest talking point. When approached by Joe the Plumber in Ohio with concerns about his taxes being raised, Obama said "when you spread the wealth around" everyone does better. Never mind the logical accuracy to this theory, the media and the GOP jumped on top of this, getting people to throw around the s-word.

Obama hardly qualifies as a socialist. Socialism, as Karl Marx explained it, is the transitional stage between capitalism and communism. The idea behind a socialist society is not just a redistribution of wealth, but also the idea of a classless society where there is no private property and the "government ownership and administration of the production and distribution of goods." Obama, however, is a capitalist.

Socialism is a scare word that somehow pertains to everything that is not democracy (even though some NATO counterparts utilize a social democratic system to great success).

Let it be known: Obama is no more a socialist than McCain (who supported the nationalizing—or socialization, if you will—of the financial industry). If anything, Obama has merely made a tragic choice of words. Anyone (Senator McCain) who discusses taxation is discussing the forced redistribution of wealth—a socialistic idea, but not socialism in itself.

Enough with the socialism. It’s not true.