What is the reason for Socialism being such a dirty dirty word in America?

[Rev. Rye]

American voters tend to have bugger-all in the way of understanding of political science, especially the ones that they don't have first-hand experience with. And, of course, since the most prominent memory Americans have of socialism involves the big Red Scare (particularly of the 1950s) where the people who stoked the fires against Communism seemed to have no interest in informing them what, exactly Communism was or how it was distinct from socialism or even atheism. See this infamous comic about the Red Scare written to tell Catholic schoolkids about the dangers of communism. In its sixty pages, it gives only the barest explanation about what Communism even is, and, as you might have guessed from its title, it focuses largely on the anti-religious angle (never mind that, ironically, one of the most famous and most extreme cheerleaders for capitalism at the time, Ayn Rand, was an atheist herself.)