Free market fundamentalism--more pathos, less logos

"Free market fundamentalism" is one of the catch phrases used by many proponents of socialist-type government intervention in the face of the current economic crisis. The phrase seems immensely powerful at implying that free market policies are evil and should not even be considered in a discourse on solving the current crisis.

I recently did a search using the ABIN/Inform Global Database (which contains full-text articles from thousands of periodicals around the world) for the word fundamentalism. The search returned 1,823 results, organized chronologically, with the most recent articles listed first.

Seven of the last ten articles were on economic or free market fundamentalism, the remaining three were on religious and Islamic fundamentalism. Of the next 50 (older) articles only one tied fundamentalism to free markets, in all others the association was with religious (Islamic in particular) fundamentalism.

Islamic and religious fundamentalism have been synonymous with something threatening and evil in recent years. Now the loaded term fundamentalism is transferred to free market policy ideas, infecting them in the public's perception with the same sense of threat and evil as is associated with terrorists.

As a rhetorical technique this is likely to be effective since it plays on people's emotions (pathos). Unfortunately, it doesn't contribute to a reasoned debate about what we should do next. That takes more logos.