The meaning of democratic socialism -- a mixture of political and economic democracy -- should be no mystery to Americans, who appear happy enough with a wide range of democratic socialist institutions in the United States, including public schools, public parks, minimum wage laws, Social Security, public radio, Medicare, public libraries, and the U.S. postal service.  Even so, a remarkable number of Americans mistakenly associate democratic socialism with dictatorship and oppression.  For more than a century, communists and conservatives helped cause this confusion.