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Capital Embellishment: Why do Tea Partiers uppercase so many of their nouns?
Slate ^ | 1 Nov 2010 | John Lackman

Posted on 11/01/2010 9:53:43 PM PDT by smokingfrog

If he becomes governor of Colorado, Tea Partier Dan Maes will remind citizens that "freedom originates in a Supreme Ruler of the Universe," according to his Web site. In her campaign materials, New Jersey congressional candidate and Tea Partier Anna C. Little rhapsodizes the "inalienable rights by our Creator, among them Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" and touts strict border control as "the first step in the process of regaining control of our Republic." As you read these sentences, your first question is surely: Why do these and other Tea Party candidates hold the rules of capitalization in such contempt?

Capitalizing heavily today is, then, like wearing a tricorn hat or calling your interest group the Tea Party. The point is to hark back to better times, to establish your politics as more authentically American, and to associate yourself with the Founding Fathers. "To restore America we need less Marx and more Madison," Glenn Beck likes to say. More Capitals, less Das Kapital!

What capital-ist Tea Partiers fail to realize, however, is that their orthography imitates not Thomas Jefferson and James Madison but the far-less famous Timothy Matlack and Jacob Shallus—a couple of secretaries. No one played a larger role in crafting the Declaration and the Constitution than Jefferson and Madison, respectively, but it was Matlack and Shallus who hand wrote the official, signed versions of these documents and freely recapitalized them as they saw fit.

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: orthography; teaparty
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We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
1 posted on 11/01/2010 9:53:45 PM PDT by smokingfrog
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To: smokingfrog

This passes for wit in liberal circles?


2 posted on 11/01/2010 9:56:25 PM PDT by moodyskeptic (Cultural warrior with a keyboard)
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To: smokingfrog

Must be a slow news day when someone complains about uppercase letters.


3 posted on 11/01/2010 10:00:52 PM PDT by Slyfox
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To: smokingfrog

Well she did capitalize pursuit........


4 posted on 11/01/2010 10:01:41 PM PDT by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)
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To: Slyfox
I AGREE!!!
5 posted on 11/01/2010 10:02:16 PM PDT by gov_bean_ counter ( Sarah Palin - For such a time as this...)
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To: Slyfox

He’ll have plenty of things to complain about tomorrow. Let him have his rant.


6 posted on 11/01/2010 10:02:42 PM PDT by Ronin (If he were not so gruesomely incompetent and dangerous, Obama would just be silly.)
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To: smokingfrog

Could it just possibly be because that’s the way it’s written in the Constitution?


7 posted on 11/01/2010 10:03:30 PM PDT by jwparkerjr (It's the Constitution, Stupid!)
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To: smokingfrog
Somewhere, members of this clown's fan club are texting,

what u b doing u got 2 c this

8 posted on 11/01/2010 10:03:45 PM PDT by FlingWingFlyer (Just another white boy riding in the back of the bus next to the Emergency Exit.)
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To: smokingfrog
and i want to know why yankees put an er at the end of alabama...

ee cummings mode

9 posted on 11/01/2010 10:04:14 PM PDT by gov_bean_ counter ( Sarah Palin - For such a time as this...)
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To: smokingfrog
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Now you've gone and done it. The author, John Lackman, will be pissed you lifted words from an Obama speech without attribution.

10 posted on 11/01/2010 10:04:49 PM PDT by VeniVidiVici (Defund National Peoples Radio!! Democrats are for free speech. Just not for you.)
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To: smokingfrog

When exactly did “uppercase” become a verb?


11 posted on 11/01/2010 10:05:17 PM PDT by Cringing Negativism Network (GOP establishment are dinosaurs. Tea Party is a great big asteroid...)
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To: Slyfox
Must be a slow news day when someone complains about uppercase letters.

The kind of article you write on the eve of the electorate handing you your ass on a silver platter....

12 posted on 11/01/2010 10:06:45 PM PDT by kevao
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To: smokingfrog

... because there is a difference between god and God. The left knows that, and it is why they cant ... no ... wont ... acknowledge it. The use of capitals is indicative of specific meaning. To say man has certain inalienable rights is not the same as Man has certain inalienable rights. The first could be a gender, but the second means a genus. If man has certain inalienable rights, then wo-man may not have those same rights.


13 posted on 11/01/2010 10:07:57 PM PDT by RainMan
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To: smokingfrog
What John Lackman doesn't understand is that, in German, nouns are capitalized.
14 posted on 11/01/2010 10:10:54 PM PDT by April Lexington (Study the Constitution so you know what they are taking away!)
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To: Cringing Negativism Network
When exactly did “uppercase” become a verb?

Maybe the same day "costed" became a word...

15 posted on 11/01/2010 10:11:02 PM PDT by gov_bean_ counter ( Sarah Palin - For such a time as this...)
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To: USNBandit

This guy seems to think that the secretaries went crazy with the capitalization, but they did so on the original copy that the members of the Continental Congress signed. One would think that those learned men would have insisted that the document be correct as written. They weren’t like today’s Congressmen that don’t read what they vote yea on.


16 posted on 11/01/2010 10:11:20 PM PDT by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)
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To: moodyskeptic
This passes for Wit in liberal Circles?

Apparently so, and there seems to be no Lack of Nitwits in the Comments Section.

17 posted on 11/01/2010 10:11:59 PM PDT by smokingfrog (Because you don't live near a bakery doesn't mean you have to go without cheesecake.)
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To: April Lexington
... and... in those days, English was much more Germanic than today. King George, was, in fact, German so it makes sense. And... we are supposed to be the knuckle draggers!
18 posted on 11/01/2010 10:12:32 PM PDT by April Lexington (Study the Constitution so you know what they are taking away!)
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To: gov_bean_ counter

This really should be benchmarked.


19 posted on 11/01/2010 10:13:00 PM PDT by Cringing Negativism Network (GOP establishment are dinosaurs. Tea Party is a great big asteroid...)
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To: gov_bean_ counter
and i want to know why yankees put an er at the end of alabama...

It all started with those who drank of the Charles River. Somehow, it caused them to move the "r"s from the middle of their words to the end.

20 posted on 11/01/2010 10:13:57 PM PDT by Erasmus (Personal goal: Have a bigger carbon footprint than Tony Robbins.)
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