This quote from Frank Luntz provided another reason for me not to want to be saddled with the conservative label:
Conservatives should not be defending capitalism. They should be defending economic freedom. And there is a difference. The word capitalism was created by Karl Marx to demonize those people who make a profit. We’ve always talked about the free enterprise system or economic freedom. Suddenly, they’re trying to defend something that has only 18 percent support.
If being a conservative means having Frank Luntz tell me what I should not be defending, then I don’t want to be a conservative. He’s right about capitalism being an inaccurate term, but this sort of cave-in to the left strikes me as problematic:
Luntz told the group that the public thinks “capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”
I’m glad I’m a libertarian. I don’t have to worry about what the damn public thinks based on the wording of some silly spur-of-the-moment poll. I am proud not to be part of the “we” that has Luntz all worried.
In that respect, I’m glad to see that Ron Paul defended Mitt Romney against the business bashing which might be expected from the left, but is shameful coming from “conservatives” like Gingrich and Perry.
I don’t trust conservatives who think capitalism is immoral. As in sex, a willing buyer and a willing seller ought to be allowed to consent to whatever transaction they like.
And I’ll go even further than that. If capitalism is immoral, then that makes socialism “moral.” In that case, I prefer capitalism to morality.
Which makes me proud to be immoral.
Comments
3 responses to “The moral and the immoral”
I was thinking about this and while not a Romney fan, I actually approve of the Bain Capital crap going on NOW as it looks like Romney is going to be the candidate at this point. And I say NOW because it gets it out of the way and doesn’t leave it available as ammunition for the Democrats.
My nieces are good products of our fine school system and they have the strangest attitude toward profit.
It’s bad.
They really think that companies making a profit is bad and that I’m some kind of Tim McVeigh in waiting because I think a business being profitable is good.
I ask them lots of questions just to see what they’re learning/have learned in school and it’s very depressing.
They have no idea who Thomas Paine was, the founding fathers were dead, white slave owners and we stole the land from the Indi…. native Americans (true, but at least we didn’t eat them the way the ones we took the land from did to those here before them) who lived in harmony with nature (untrue, they just lived such brutal and short lives that they couldn’t increase much to destroy all that much of the environment, what with the 50+% infant mortality and the 40 year lifespan).
Our fine school system is systematically hiding what America used to be about.
They have no idea what the “Melting Pot” is, well, except that it’s a fondue restaurant.
We’re committing cultural suicide and it’s been very depressing to watch.
Capitalism is selling people what they want to buy. For individual cases to be bad, it requires (at least) that the buyer want something bad. For Capitalism as a whole to be bad, it requires that most such trades be bad (or at least worse than than allocation by force, i.e., crony socialism).
Aren’t we lucky to have a ruling class that is so eager to believe we’re evil as an excuse to take more power for themselves and their cronies?