The Calumny for all Occasions

In short, “fascist” is a modern word for “heretic,” branding an individual worthy of excommunication from the body politic. The left uses other words – “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobe,” “christianist” – for similar purposes, but these words have less elastic meanings. Fascism, however, is the gift that keeps on giving. George Orwell noted this tendency as early as 1946 in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language”: “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ’something not desirable.’ “

- Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism (New York: Doubleday, 2007) 4.