Glenn Greenwald points out that Americans are commonly persuaded and controlled through the use of vague terms. One example is the word “terrorism,” which tends to be applied only where the person committing violence is a Muslim and not when non-Muslims commit comparable acts. A “militant” has come to mean any person who dies when an American weapon explodes. “Class warfare” and “Civil liberties” are other commonly used vague terms that are actually used as “tools for misleading political arguments.”
Another such vague term is “rule of law,” which originally referred to the idea that “we are all equally bound to a common set of rules, regardless of power position, or prestige.” It originally meant that “nobody is above the law or below the law.” Citing the work of Thomas Carruthers, Greenwald noted that the biggest challenge is to prevent elites from living above the rule of law. The founding fathers, who personally “loved inequality,” agreed that a central requirement for the new country is that everyone would comport with the law; without this requirement, they agreed that the country would not be “legitimate and just.”
Greenwald explained that with regard to “rule of law,” things aren’t working out so well in modern day America. The biggest problem is that “we no longer believe in the principle itself.”
With regard to journalists (see below), they now tend to be situated as insiders rather than outsider watchdogs who, in less dysfunctional times, embraced the motto: “Afflict the powerful, comfort the powerless.”
Greenwald has been out and about, promoting his new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some. For many additional videos of his talks, see here.
“Free market” is another of those vague terms that are used for formulating anti-public policy. It is suggested that “free market” means mere freedom to choose where to spend one’s money. On a day to day basis, that concept seems reasonable. But “free market” government extends far beyond individual buying decisions. In practice government “free market” policies prohibit government from “freely” governing. “Free market” policies thus usurp government policy and hand the power to govern to large private for-profit corporations and wealthy individuals. “Free market” is a clever phrase for those who want an economic market that amounts to a baseball game without umpires, a market where corporations “freely” monopolize entire industries by scooping up the competition, jack up the prices and then give the consumers the “freedom” to buy limited options. The telecoms are good examples: Americans have the “freedom” to buy (or not) telephone/internet service that ranks as some of the most expensive worldwide, from a consolidated industry that provides some of the slowest internet service worldwide. http://dangerousintersection.org/2011/09/18/come-to-the-united-states-for-slow-and-expensive-internet/ Too bad there’s no longer an umpire to break up this monopolistic abuse, so that consumers have real freedom to choose. If they want fast and cheap broadband, though, they only retain the freedom to move to one of the countries that regulates the market to encourage competition in order to give consumers real freedom of choice.
“Free market” has also come to embody the concept of money=speech, meaning that big industries, such as telecoms, fossil-energy, defense industry, insurance, banking and pharma have the “freedom” to purchase members of Congress to make laws that severely limit consumer choices on a day to day basis. “Free market” means that powerful corporate players with huge teams of lobbyists can use massive amounts of money to enhance their “freedom” to rewrite laws in order that ordinary Americans have “freedom” to exercise fewer choices on a day to day basis. Ordinary Americans retain their “freedom” to have fewer choices. That is what the “free market” has come to mean.
“Free market” thus means two things that are antithetical to each other: A) The freedom of business to either serve or abuse ordinary Americans, and B) The freedom of Americans to choose from whatever trickles down through a corrupted Congress and the monopolistic market it allows. These two things are often dramatically at odds with each other. “Free market” thus means a willingness on behalf of Congress to allow a lopsided war dominated by highly-monied corporate players, who have won (through campaign contributions and lobbyists) the “freedom” to purchase “legal rights” to abuse small businesses and consumers.
When you next hear the term “free market,” ask “free for whom?” And when you next hear someone urge that “government regulation is an attack on capitalism,” remind the speaker that unregulated capitalism constitutes an attack on the freedoms of ordinary Americans, and that regulated capitalism is the only way to optimize individual freedom.
Everyone uses the term “free market” incorrectly, especially the elite who want you to believe that what we have is actually a free market system.
Everyone gets it quite confused, the left to attack the right, and the right to attack the left.
But, allow me to clarify:
http://libertymaven.com/2009/09/25/michael-moore-its-not-capitalism-silly-man-its-corporatism/7449/
http://ilovetheconstitution.blogspot.com/2007/07/capitalism-vs-corporatism.html
http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/6989/107583.aspx
So, really, the system we have here in this country really is just a farce to keep power in the hands of the few and make people think that they don’t have the power and ability to access the free market and better themselves like anyone else.
Just Saying.
😀