To answer your question directly:
Personally speaking, the experiences of both myself and my country with socialism are generally speaking pretty positive. Good experiences from all my family with collectively funded national healthcare. World class state education to university level. Council services, despite the odd niggle, are pretty good all round. Frequent public transport too and from my work. Water flows from the taps. Power out of the socket. Effective safety net should I fall on hard times (which I have done in the past).
A fairly typical 1st World existence, or so I like to think. One I hope that a viable fusion solution would help improve even more.
Take a look at the representation from the Scottish parliament:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament
The left and center left have 86.1% of the vote. (more or less)
The center right only have 13.9% of the vote. (more or less)
Socialist have been the ruling party within Scotland for the past 50+ years. And even before that, the center right would have a few of the posters here frothing at the mouth.
As for you "liberty" comment. Define please. Free and fair democratic elections. Extensive free press. The national pass time is to tell politicians to get stuffed. But then the government isn't really seen as a big bad bogy man here.
So, to sum up, yes, I and 86% of my country are (varying degrees of) socialist. Why? Because we like it.