Some commenter over at Blue Hampshire is wondering why there was no vendors area at the STEWARD communications conference at SNHU this weekend.  Apparently we conservatives are all about capitalism so we need to be capitalizing on it at every opportunity to justify their worldview of our own.  No one was hawking swag.  This seems to have unnerved some left wing corporatist. 

If it matters, Conservatives are actually for free markets.  Capitalism is merely a potential by-product, and not the unfavorable one they would have you believe.   Capitalism and free markets have proven themselves to be the best way to create and share wealth.  They have lifted more people out of poverty than all the sob-story, redistribution, top-down -welfare, big government hand-outs combined.  

But the mistake is understandable.  Liberals have a hard time with first principles because they get in the way of big government.  That doesn’t mean leftists don’t like capitalism.  In fact they view it as one of the best ways to finance their big government programs.   You know the ones,  with the words “free,” “choice,” “Investment,” or “America” in the title.  But they prefer to control capitalism and direct it because they claim people in business are selfish and corrupt, and should only be permitted to succeed under the pious and caring eye of a liberal-progressive government. (Never by conservative government).  We are meant to accept their view that the same human impulse that they insist makes “capitalists” greedy selfish bastards is absent from any liberal who seeks temporal power in government.  (again , not conservatives.) And that the combination of the energy of controlled capitalism, and the force of law (directed by left wing central planners) will in fact produce utopia.

Only if utopia looks similar to the seventh plane of Hell, sure.

So liberals like to bash corporations, big banks, big anything they do not control, right up until they get their way, usually after threatening them with whatever power they currently wield, and then they just pretend to bash them while making deals with them.

So don’t be fooled.  Liberals love capitalism because it is the only reliable energy source to fuel the mother-ship of the central planners.  The middle class lacks the resources, and most top down regimes milk most of the prosperity out of the lower classes in short order so they can’t be relied on to fund huge government for very long.  (That, and the middle class doesn’t much care for the results once they have to live with them–so liberal’s have to act quickly before they rebel.)   Only large corporations can collect from them the dribs and drabs of whatever is left over, and funnel it into the hands of the government.  So liberals love capitalism, they need capitalism, it’s the free market they hate. 

Wealth must be controlled by politicians, and committees,  and blue ribbon panels of bureaucrats, not people with crazy ideas like individual responsibility, or charting their own future. 

And “left wing capitalism” always devolves into corporate socialism, class warfare, elitism, big money back-room pay offs, special exceptions for the ruling class, and a government/industrial complex that leaves the citizenry with higher taxes, a lower standard of living, fewer choices, fewer winners, fully dependent, and constantly on the cusp of misery.  In most cases lawlessness becomes the only potential path to any kind of personal prosperity.

We’re a few years from that, but we’ve crested the ridge.  If we don’t back up it’s over the top for the lot of us. 

So no, no blatant capitalism on “display” at the STEWARD event unless you consider that STEWARD paid for it all with donations and income from the free market.  

That, by the way–to the liberal mind–is what is called a “special interest” group.  As in, they have no interest in the only logical conclusion to a top down, centrally planned, government take over of everything.

And No Che Guevera T-shirts either