Posted on 01/18/2012 12:43:46 AM PST by neverdem
One of the simplest rhetorical truths is that the side that defines the vocabulary of a debate wins the debate. Yet, amazingly, we still see experienced conservative politicians with access to advanced polling operations and an array of advisors use the Lexicon of the Left. And this election cycle is no exception.
I could almost cringe when I hear -- as I did repeatedly during Monday's South Carolina GOP debate -- Republicans talk about "capitalism." "I believe in capitalism..." "Barack Obama doesn't believe in capitalism..." Capitalism this and capitalism that -- look at me with my plump wallet, walking stick, and tony top hat. Oh, it's not that I don't believe in free enterprise; it's that we shouldn't use words that conjure up sentiments akin to the preceding rhyme.
And polls inform that this is precisely what "capitalism" does. For example, Pew Research Center reports, "[s]lightly more than half (52%) react positively to the word 'capitalism,' compared with 37% who say they have a negative reaction." According with this is a 2009 Rasmussen poll showing that, shockingly, "only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better..."
--snip--
Some may now lament how we have allowed the left to demonize our terminology. But "capitalism" in the modern sense was never ours -- and the left didn't demonize it.
They spawned it.
In point of fact, it was originated by communism's founding fathers.
The two culprits were French socialists Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. True believers both, Blanc claimed that man's evils were the result of pressures born of competition and gave us the principle "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" (Karl Marx stole it from Blanc), while the equally radical Proudhon believed that "property is theft." Of course, Marx the great imitator then popularized "capitalism."...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Do not allow the left to form the language. They are too good at it.
I prefer to refer to “individual freedom”, since that is what capitalism really means. I am a strong advocate of the real capitalism that allows small businesses to grow and thrive, not the crony capitalism that the Dem party uses to control big business and to funnel tax dollars to their favorite donors, and not the pure laissez-faire capitalism in which there are no government regulations on business. I want government there just enough to prevent sleaze and deception but not actually picking winners and losers in the marketplace. To me, capitalism is one of the most beautiful concepts in human history, since it is a key to individual freedom, but I don’t use the word “capitalism” in most political discussions. I am pragmatic enough that I prefer to sell skeptics on the concept separately from selling them on candidates who will protect individual freedom.
And the freedom of Bain Capital to invest in companies, receive dividends, make a profit, sometimes succeed, and sometimes fail. And the freedom of lenders to loan money (or not) to Bain investments and not whine about what Bain does with the money if it's allowed under the terms of their loans.
Let Team Soetoro '12 make this a dispicable activity.
Throw down Hayek’s ‘Constitution of Liberty’ like Thatcher! That’s what we believe!
We shouldn’t cowering from a term like the ‘Progressives’ shed the label ‘Communists’.
The ‘Progressives’ shed the label ‘Communists’. Marcy Kaptur, D-OH says we need ‘state controlled capitalism’. The Pavolian response to capitalism is negative thanks to the left’s ‘10 minutes of hate’ conditioning.
Are the American voters capable of being educated about freedom? I don’t think so.
Throw down Hayek’s ‘Constitution of Liberty’ like Thatcher! That’s what we believe!
I agree, they would have more success talking about private property rights. No one wants their assets taken away.
Free enterprise would be a suitable replacement term.
This has nothing to do with that communist lie. It has to do with not falling victim to communist manipulation. I’ll try this one more time.
“Capitalism” was invented for the EXACT PURPOSE of making economic freedom sound bad. And it’s working. People do not react all that negatively to “free markets” or “economic freedom.” They react very badly to “capitalism.”
Also understand that we had free enterprise in the early 1800s. But no one called it capitalism until the commies invented the word a bit later.
Have you listened to Frank Luntz talk about this? Did you read the article? The communists INVENTED the word. It was never used by conservatives to refer to free markets before that time.
Yes, but none of these nimrods get it. Heck, maybe the left is right. Maybe conservatives are stupid.
Are you really a capitalist? You have so much capital that you can spend it in slave labor factories in China and then move it to Burma because their slave labor is even cheaper?
Do you abstain from restricting your capital to your own country by tying it up in land or resources here?
International bankers are capitalists, but if your money is tied up in home ownership and and the fed corrupted American stock market, you’re NOT a capitalist.
From the web site: Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy:
The word ‘Capitalism’ and its related term ‘Capitalist,’ were not “first derived in the English vernacular from a translation of the pejorative term used by Karl Marx” (though he certainly used them pejoratively in his writings).
‘Capitalism’ was a word and a phenomenon neither used by, nor known to, Adam Smith. Capitalism was a wholly late 19th-century experience. The Oxford English Dictionary (Vol II, p 863) locates its first usage in English in 1854 by William Makepeace Thackeray in his novel, The Newcomes.
Karl Marx published, in German, Das Kapital, in 1867 and subsequent translations introduced the word ‘capitalism’ to his readers some years later (Moscow’s ‘Marxist’ editors during the Soviet era ‘interpolated’ the new word of capitalism into his works as if Marx himself had written it).
While Marx may have read Thackeray, it is unlikely that Thackeray read Marx in time to include the word, capitalism, thirteen years earlier in his novel.
Of the word ‘capitalist’, this was first used in English in 1792, by Arthur Young (Travels in France) and it was used by Turgot (in French) in his ‘Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches’ LXIII-IV, 1770.
Again, read the article. The author points out that the first ones to use “capitalism” in the MODERN SENSE were communists. When Thackeray and one or two others used it previously, it meant something totally different.
And how does Webster’s describe free enterprise?
This country was founded on the concept of free enterprise. It is very different than capitalism.
Free enterprise is individual freedom.
Capitalism is the one side of the Hegelian dialectic. Communism is the other.
You see that capitalism and communism work very well together- chinese communists are also capitalists.
But free enterprise doesn’t support communism. With free enterprise communism would be dead.
However that is why the capitalists oppose free enterprise and why they have tried to erase it from the national culture and memory in America. They profit very nicely from the slave laborers in communist countries.
Communism is just another form of Capitalism, where the State is has the monopoly on Capital.
It is called rehoritic and it is important to understand.
Republicans should talk about property rights and building “American based” businesses. Small, mom and pop business.
Corporate advocacy is deadly because Corporations have abused the US and are seen as internationalists/foreigners and elitists/fascists. (The banksters bail out, home loan scam, SOPA, export of jobs to foreign lands, open borders, limo liberal social agenda and anti-Americanism.) Corporation elitist abuse is associated with the word “capitalism.” Capitalism is defined in the public’s mind as elitist and unethical/ abusive/scamming/treasonous/abusive corporatism.
Don’t talk about deregulating banksters! It’s too complicated and it has been abused by banks and politicans deals in crashing the real estate market. Americans generally want banksters in jail for the real estate loan scam and want out from under the real estate losses of their loan scam.
Talk about Obama having his administration filled with croney corporatists and Golden Sacks banksters looking for a US Treasury shake down and special favors. Talk about Obama shipping stimilus money and jobs over to foreign countries for his corporatist pals.
Like it or not, this is the state of words and public impressions right now in the mainstream of the public as the economic crash has settled out. It plays a big part in winning elections. The argument for free markets can be had in either the realm of American small business advocacy or in the real of international corporations. Stiff arm advocating for the internationalists - corporations. The CEO’s screwed the pooch with their expressed insults of American workers, our constitutional Republic and their aggressive immorality. Their public representatives are seen as unethical - dishonest and suffering from a superiority complex. They are unpopular having too high opinion of their brilliant/wealthy limo-socialist selves. They are seen as fascists.
Self interest, hate and disrespect is a two way street with the big egos globe trotting Corporate elite. Corporations interacting with Americans today are political idiots and the GOP should hang them around the necks of Obama and the DNC - whom the CEO’s have supported.
This does not mean Republicans have to harm Corporations when in power. But being associated with loud mouth liberal elitists who think they are superior to everyone and who call themselves “capiatalists” is never a good idea.
“And the freedom of Bain Capital to invest in companies, receive dividends, make a profit, sometimes succeed, and sometimes fail.”
There was no “sometimes fail”. When Bain purchased Worldwide Grinding Systems for $8 million they borrowed $12 million against the company, recouping their investment plus a healthy profit. Bain continued to receive dividends and management fees until the company failed.
So don’t worry, Bain didn’t lose a cent and it’s all legal. The sole whiners are the former employees of the steel firm, who had their retirement pay reduced by $400 a month.
“Don’t talk about deregulating banksters! It’s too complicated and it has been abused by banks and politicans deals in crashing the real estate market.”
Banks, investment banks as opposed to commercial banks, got the deregulation they wanted during the Clinton administration. They wanted Glass-Steagall gone and so it was, with Republican support in Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the CFMA 2000.
To me it’s no surprise that less than 10 years later the economy was plunged into a major crisis with investment banks right in the middle of it. Glass Steagall was passed because of hard lessons the Depression Congresses learned. That was all un-learned by the geniuses who dismantled all of the walls separating Wall Street from Main Street.
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