The word socialist has a variety of connotations in the U.S. For instance to a segment of the U.S. population having universal healthcare is equated with socialism. Capitalists in France, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany etc. tend disagree with this equating. So when someone says, “Not true socialism” we need to know if they are referring the actual definition of socialism or the popularly bastardized colloquial meaning.

What is for sure true is that power corrupts and concentrating too much in too few hands is bad. Ignorant people like Chavez and Maduro who have simplistic ideas and too much power is really, really bad. Think Mao and Pol Pot.

When the cause becomes more important than the truth, whether it be communism, environmentalism, religion, free markets, etc., then people will suffer if policies are implemented simply to support the cause.

Just saying, “Socialsim is bad” is not helpful because then all one has to do is paint a particular policy as being socialistic to be defeated. There are countries that have what many Americans would call socialist policies that do great. Some do not.

India says hi?

And considering that the nation has no oil wealth, enough language and cultural diversity to make a single language impossible, massive poverty from independence, its achievements are nothing to sniff at.

And they passed Net Neutrality laws after people pushed for it against incumbent telcos having the upper hand at the start of the process.

Yep. Chavez started as a proletariat leader. I believe some liberal leaders like Sean Penn publicly supported Chavez (? someone fact check me here).

I think you're confusing socialism and communism. A lot of Western European countries have or have had in the past decades socialist regimes.

What's that saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?