I know very well that the Soviet Union, Communist China, etc had socialist economies and not the communist utopian ideal. I've read " the Communist manifesto", many books on "Ricardian Socialism" and the various types of "utopian socialism" which preceded Marx. They are all cut from the same cloth: promoting collectives over invidiual voluntary interaction. No ideology is evil, it's the capacity of what an ideology allows which can be unethical or amoral. Socialism, in all its forms, gives too much to collectives over individuals, in my opinion, and that is why I oppose all of its forms. 

Laissez-faire capitalism can only exist in an anarchy, I agree. But that doesn't mean trying to reach that ideal as much as possible is not valuable. Just as a representative government is based on the utopian idea that all individuals can be represented by stereotyping their beliefs into geographic groupings. 

National defense is a tradeable service. The United States government, takes money from people, what we call taxation. It funds an entity, called the military, to provide the service of national defense (among other illegitimate services.) All people are entitled to this defense equally. The activity of this entity, is centrally planned. That is as socialist as you can get. Just because it has other functions, many of which are aggressive, doesn't mean it isn't socialism. In fact, socialism's basis is aggression. The collective aggresses against the individual, by taking his property. This is true with or without government. Of course a socialist will tell you that the concept of holding property itself is aggressive, depending on his flavor of socialism, but that has no basis in natural rights arguments. 

Basically Socialism is a true equality of opportunity where the state attempts to remediate to natural and social discriminations. It is a strong but not total state form. The transition to socialism can be slow and can be done keeping the republican/democratic model.

Communism is a total state in the sense that it doesn't just regulate the social and economical practices, it creates the social and economical practices. The transition to communism is supposed to be fast as it requires the "capture" of financial and structural assets.

I'd like to separately address this. Socialism did not start with Karl Marx, and it is not exclusive to Marxian theory. As for the Welfare-warfare state, F.A. Hayek - once a Democratic Socialist who converted to Classical Liberalism - provides a great explanation of how Democratic socialism incrementally progresses into tyranny, as the state demands more and more control over people's lives, because one's economic freedoms are intimately entangled with one's social freedoms. He explains the concept of collectivism vs. individualism, and how Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and Socialism are all rooted in the belief that individuals do not have rights, but collectives do, and it is illegitimate to have such systems encompass a liberal society (a rights-based society.) 

The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek.  (Condensed Version)

This is untrue as well: socialism just takes different rights into account. It says that his right to basic housing and basic health care supercedes her right to own a third Mercedes Benz: the money that would have gone to the Benz goes to care for the other person.

It is merely the triumph of economic rights over property rights. At least in its more democratic form.

Those aren't natural rights. They might possibly be contractual obligations, but it would have to be a real contract and not the inconsistent concept of the "social contract." This is of course if we are assuming a deontological ethics position. Most socialists assume consequentialist ethics, and don't need to justify their actions with the concepts of rights or obligations. Which makes them illiberal. 

Right: freedom, like all things, is only good insofar as it is useful.

But for your specific example, let me ask:

Where does he receive his right to live in a house and receive health-care, without exchanging something of equal value? If all parties chose to refuse health-care or housing to him, they do not want to work for nothing (or even if he can pay), how might these parties deny it? If they cannot, are they not slaves? If the care or house is funded by somebody else, say the woman who wants to buy her third Mercedes Benz, can she refuse? Let's say, no, she cannot, then you used the product of her time and haven't compensated her, is she not a slave? Her existence is only to serve him, is it not? Then she is a slave. Is slavery a liberal position? Is liberty (the antithesis of slavery) not a natural right? Those are all questions that arise in my mind from your example.

Yes, but it must have an ethitical basis so as to have  a meaning to use. If anything can be declared a right, then the concept of a "right" has no basis nor meaning. I can declare the right to kill somebody, if it means 1,000 people will have their "right" of housing and health-care fullfilled. Maybe, if I kill this person the government gets to tax the inheritance 100% and provide these people with housing and healthcare. Would I not be right to kill him? Does the rights of these 1000 people supercede his right to life? See how ridiculous it is to label anything to be a right? 

All rights are a human construct, the right of property included. We determine these rights through a collective discourse on what makes a just society, which is then enacted through democratic legislation. These rights can be based in a rank-order as well. I tend to reflect the Hierarchy of Needs, myself, which places the most basic needs as the most fundamental.