I would think, and perhaps you would think, too, that an entrepreneur is a man or woman who runs a private business, bearing the risks and demands of his or her enterprise.
For this reason, Americans are sympathetic to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial efforts – we admire the creativity and effort of business men and women who take risks to build something productive.
Knowing Americans admire entrepreneurs, a small class of publicly-funded men, and the lobbyists and press flacks who represent them, frequently take the concept of genuine private entrepreneurship and apply it to big, taxpayer-funded projects for their white-collar friends.
They use a clear word for their darker needs.
They’re neither poor nor otherwise disadvantaged, these public men. Nor are they among those who deservedly seek modest assistance for genuine hardships.
Instead, these well-fed few push themselves to the front of the line, seeking large payments (often amounting to millions), for their projects and those of their oily friends, on a public tab.
It’s in this way that – absurdly – public institutions, managed by public men who have never worked in private enterprise, fund so-called entrepreneurs in residence at public schools, build innovation centers, and pay for the marketing services of press agents and lobbyists to lap still more from a public bowl.
For all that they take, they take one thing more: they distort language and steal words in an attempt to make their public, white-collar welfare look like private enterprise.
It’s not.