I'm not so sure that it's "creeping". If one was to step back from all the politics and look at the system of government we have here in the U.S., I think it's fair to conclude that we are already well along towards socialism. The problem is that we won't admit it, as well as admitting that the system we have is very inefficient and expensive.

The framers wrote a Constitution with a weak central government with well-focused responsibilities--national defense and the maintenance of a rule of law...little more. The states were set up as the most powerful governmental entities; they were the "closest" to the people and that's the way the people who wrote and signed the Constitution wanted it.

So what's happened in the intervening 234 years? The federal government has been permitted to become all-powerful, almost omnipotent. The states have willingly ceded their rights and their responsibilities in exchange for benefits provided to their residents that they don't have to worry about or pay for. All that "good stuff" provided by the central government is funded by taxes, and more recently huge amounts of debt. The states don't have the option of issuing debt to pay for increased benefits, projects, entitlements, programs, etc. that Washington has willingly provided in exchange for increased power.

For all intents and purposes, we have become a socialist state. We haven't yet completely met the definition of socialism--a system wherein either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources is the basis of the economy. But neither have many of the countries that we disdainfully call "socialist". Most of them still have largely private ownership of the resources and means of production. Even China has a fairly substantial elelment of privately-owned factories and resources.

We call our system a "democracy", but if one really sets out to prove that that's our system, I really think we'd be hard-pressed to prove that's the system we actually have. We elect representatives democratically, but then they govern with strong central control, paying little attention to the citizens who elected them. We are clearly more socialist than capitalist.

What we have done is to permit a large system of centrally-controlled regulations, programs, rules, and assets (like roads and railroads and bridges) and taxes, that are no longer under the control of local people and local governments. The problem is that those centrally-provided things grew as a hodge-podge of benefits and entitlements, unlike the firm central control of what looks and acts like a socialist government. A major difference is that a true socialist government doesn't have to run for re-election every couple of years and can govern with more consistency and co-ordination. We're seeing how such firm central control creates consistency of central programs and the economy when we look at China. What we have is a very inefficient quasi-socialist system--whether we want to admit it or not.

The problem--as I see it at least--is that there's probably no going back to the system of government envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. The central government has become too embedded in every minute of our daily lives to think that in any way we could disassemble what has happened, particularly over the last 100 years or so. Particularly since the enactment of a federal income tax, which has permitted the central government to "buy its way" into our daily lives. If one thinks about what would be required to go back to stronger local government control over those things we expect from government, I think that would have to be admitted. And maybe the changes in how we live would prevent it anyway. We no longer travel by horse; we no longer communicate with paper and pen; our economy is no longer local; our kids no longer stay at home to work when they've finished their schooling; and so forth. I suppose it could be argued that we really need stronger central government just to address the needs of how our lives have changed since 1776.

So what we're left with is a very inefficient, unwieldy and uncoordinated system of quasi-socialism. We're also left with a problem that I can't begin to recommend an answer for--if we really can't go back, how do we make our government better, more efficient, less costly, more responsive to the desires of our (rapidly changing) population? How do we get a government to be responsive to the needs and desires of local residents? The needs of cityfolk and farmers, English-speaking and others for whom English is a second language, the wealthy and the poor, Christians and those who follow another faith, the healthy and the sick, all kinds of different segments of our population--they're all different and have different desires and expectations from their government. How do we re-create a more responsive and affordable system of government?

I don't have a clue.