What Is Socialism in 2009?

The New York Times has a blog, Room for Debate, in which they pose that question to numerous individuals and post the responses, including from the progressive magazine The Nation and the conservative American Enterprise Institute. It makes for interesting reading here.

It seems that whatever President Obama talks about — whether it’s overhauling health care, or regulating Wall Street, or telling schoolchildren to study hard — his opponents have called him a socialist. “Socialism” was an epithet on many placards at protests in Washington over the weekend. What does the word mean today, nearly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall? What role has the label played in American political history?

This is an interesting read.