Yet another new name to airbrush out those awful libertarians

In what is intended as a scary headline, the left wing People for the American Way proclaims that “the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection.”

I see that as a classic example of coalition politics. In the name of environmental protection, some of the remaining vestiges of freedom are being destroyed. So, go coalition!

Except, because I am not in the “Religious Right” part of the coalition, I naturally found myself wondering… whatever can they mean with the phrase “Corporate Right”? What precisely is that? I read on, and found the demons of the “Corporate Right” prominently listed:

….the Acton Institute, which is primarily funded by groups like ExxonMobil, the Scaife foundations and the Koch brothers. Beisner is also an adviser to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which is financed by the oil-backed Earthart Foundation, the Koch brothers, and ExxonMobil.

[…]

….the Heartland Institute, a pro-corporate group funded by Exxon Mobil, the Koch Family Foundations, and the Scaife foundations. Other organizations funded by energy corporations that cosponsored the conference include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, and Americans for Prosperity.

[…]

Corporations and their front groups are increasingly using this rhetoric as well. For example, the pro-corporate American Action Network ran campaign ads featuring a senior citizen suffering through cold winter nights, claiming that the American Clean Energy and Security Act would make energy unaffordable and devastate the economy. Peggy Venable, the Texas state director of the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity, claimed that “the Global Warming hoax is imperialism allowing a vehicle for environmentalists to dictate the way of life for us all – and is most harmful for third world countries where children often don’t see their fifth birthday.”

So it’s Koch, Koch, Koch! I guess they think that if they use that name enough in a negative context, it will become the leftie equivalent of “SOROS!” (Much as Soros sucks, an unfortunate reality is that the name “Soros” just does not readily lend itself to this sort of ridicule.)

What’s interesting to me as a libertarian is that not only are the Koch brothers libertarians, but nowhere in the entire PAW piece does the l-word appear.

Surely they aren’t trying to make libertarians disappear by making up a new, more evil sounding word for them. Why can’t they just use the old and familiar “hedonist” as an anti-libertarian smear?

While I don’t mind all that much having to be on the Corporate Right, do I really have to be? No corporation pays me to write this blog, and I don’t have a corporation to call my own. To steal a line from Robert Duvall, “I’m a man without a corporation!”

So how can I ever hope to succeed as a member of the Corporate Right? 

And why aren’t they saying anything about the Corporate Left? It isn’t as if fat cats like billionaire Soros and union buster Michael Moore don’t have corporations, you know….


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One response to “Yet another new name to airbrush out those awful libertarians”

  1. miriam Avatar

    “Soros” reminds me of the Yiddish word “Tsuris,” meaning trouble. I always think of his as “George Tsuris.”