I've been using the moniker peacefulcapitalist on Chatham County bulletin boards since 2003. It came from a BusinessWeek article.
We were in the run-up to the Iraq war and BusinessWeek ran an article headlined The High Price of Bad Diplomacy. In this article BW described how the Bush administration's bungled diplomacy (or lack thereof) in the run-up to war had hurt American companies and would continue to. What struck me about that article was that it put opposition to the war in stark economic terms, instead of the peacenik terms that most opposition had been using, and which everyone who wasn't already bought into the anti-war view ignored or dismissed out of hand. It basically pointed out that war is not only bad for peacenik reasons, but also because it's not compatible with democratic capitalism.
When I picked that moniker it was specifically to post a link to the BW article, as I was arguing about the war and I didn't think I would keep it very long. But almost eight years later, I'm still using it because I think it illustrates the idea of being a liberal who nonetheless embraces and believes in capitalism and markets -- those are not incompatible!
Plus there are so few good monikers left on the internet that someone hasn't already claimed!
Sometimes in arguments people will try to claim I'm not really a capitalist because I don't agree with their view of how capitalism should work or be regulated. That will be for later discussion on this blog.
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