red-baiting and what's wrong with spreading the wealth around anyway?

The red-baiting that was prominent during the red scares and which has been resurrected with a vengeance by the McCain camp should frighten us all. As election day draws near the McCain camp has increased its attacks on Obama as a "socialist" who will destroy the U.S. through his big-government tax plan. With the assertion that Obama is a socialist, understood within the context of red-baiting, is the notion that socialism is antithetical to freedom and democracy
(and to take it a step further that freedom and democracy go hand in hand with individual property rights):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/25/palin-obamas-tax-plans-co_n_137851.html

There are so many problems inherent in this particular attack it's comical, but also disheartening because such a baseless claim has been so effectively used to scare so many voters, and even more disheartening that the accumulation of individual wealth has become such a top priority for so many U.S.ers that such an attack is not only considered valid, but since the final Presidential Debate, has even became a centerpiece of the McCain campaign.

While Palin told crowds that Obama's tax plan "sounds like 'socialism'" to her, McCain was scaring voters with the threat that Obama was going to "spread your wealth around." "That's one of the tenets of socialism," he told Chris Wallace on FoxNews.

My immediate response: "what's wrong with that?"

When 2% of the world's total population control over half of the total household wealth and when CEOs' pay increased almost 300% from 1990 to 2005, while production workers gained a scant 4.3% (adjusted for inflation) and the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 9.3%, (when inflation is taken into account), it's time to spread the wealth around.

I'm a bit amazed that McCain can take this unbridled selfishness and get away with making it a major point of his campaign with such huge crowd support. Maybe i shouldn't be.