Adelson speaks — but what is he talking about?

But in an interview for a Forbes magazine cover story running in the March 12 edition, Adelson opens up to Steven Bertoni, whose job description is covering “the world’s billionaires, plus entrepreneurs and disruptors.”

In Adelson, Bertoni has all three.

In the interview, Adelson dismisses criticism of his donations to Gingrich, which came at a critical time for that campaign. But Adelson says he’s not entirely sanguine about his giving.

“I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” Adelson said. “But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it. Because I know that guys like [liberal philanthropist George] Soros have been doing it for years, if not decades.”

Hypocrisy? Hardly. It makes sense that conservative billionaires would not want to disarm unilaterally if liberal billionaires are going to continue to try to influence politics.

And let’s get something else out of the way: Soros and Adelson have every right to spend big bucks in politics under the First Amendment. We can lament the fact that a single Sheldon Adelson writing a $10 million PAC check has the same impact as 2,000 regular people each donating the maximum $5,000 currently allowed under federal law to a candidate. That doesn’t make it illegal.

But it’s when Adelson discusses his motives for giving that things get strange.

“What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economy we’ve been experiencing for almost four years,” he said. “That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the government controlling people’s lives.”

Please. America is no more “socialist” today than it was back in 1933, when Adelson and the New Deal were born, unless he’s using a private definition of the word. About the closest you can come to socialism — government owning the means of production and distribution — is the federal government’s investments in car companies, otherwise known as the auto bailout.

Is President Barack Obama seeking to set wages and prices? Is he trying to increase the income tax rate to 70 or 80 percent? Did his health-care reform bill make doctors and nurses government employees, working in state-owned hospitals?

Of course not. Obama is asking for a meager increase in income taxes for people who earn more than $250,000, and his health-care plan is more crony capitalism than socialism.

Meanwhile, under this allegedly socialist president, Adelson saw his net worth — now estimated at $21.6 billion — jump more than any other American’s, according to Forbes. That’s due in no small part to Adelson’s Macau casino operations, allowed by the leaders of a real socialist country, China. (Adelson has praised China’s leadership at the same time he’s seen fit to run down the president of his own country. But when’s the last time Obama put somebody in jail for going to church, or ordered a column of tanks to disrupt a tea party rally?)

Adelson does have one caveat: He doesn’t want to pay for negative campaigning. “I don’t believe in negative campaigning,” he says. “Money is fungible, but you can’t take my money out of the total money you have and use it for negative campaigning.” Too late. According to the Washington Post, Adelson supplied two of every three dollars the pro-Gingrich super PAC spent in January. That money paid for a brutal movie ahead of the South Carolina primary depicting ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as a callous vulture capitalist.

A billionaire underwriting an attack on a millionaire, for practicing capitalism? Oh, the horror.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.