Having made a cottage industry out of attacking Barack Obama as a "socialist," National Review Online has suddenly come to the conclusion that the term socialist itself has no meaning whatsoever.
And we all know who is responsible for denuding the term of any substantive content: why, Bernie Sanders, of course!
Here's a piece they are running by George Will: "Bernie Sanders's 'Socialist' Charade."
Is it obligatory to take seriously his pose of being an “independent” and a “socialist”? It gives excitable Democratic activists a frisson of naughtiness to pretend that he is both. Actually, he is neither.
...
If he is a “socialist,” who isn’t?
For America’s Republicans, opposition to these three [government regulation, social safety net, and progressive taxation] ubiquitous realities is avowed but not constraining. They neither plan nor pose a serious threat to any of the three, so they, too, can be called “socialists,” which is a classification that no longer classifies.
Here's NRO from the good-bad old days when socialism meant something, and it meant something bad, dammit!
"Barack Obama, Socialist"
"Obama, Pragmatic Socialist"
"Obama's 'Socialist Brainwashing' Update"
"Romney, Obama, and Socialism"
"What's So Strange About Socialism"
"Radical in the White House"
"IPAB, Obama, and Socialism"