Doug Casey was asked to leave the stage…

If you've never heard Doug speak, you should. His controversial opinions always rile up the room. This time was no different…

The founder of Casey Research opened our ninth annual Casey Research Summit this weekend in Tucson, Arizona, with a lively talk about “the perversion of words.”

Longtime Casey readers know that Doug insists on precisely defining words. “If you can't define a word,” Doug says, “then you actually don't know what you're talking about. Imprecise language leads to sloppy thinking.”

That's why Doug was fired up to talk about the perversion of language in the United States…

•  Doug said politicians have tried to change the definition of certain words…

“The politicians use these words to control the conversation…and all the monkeys follow along,” Doug said.

“Take the word ‘stimulate,' as in ‘stimulate the economy,'” he said. “Where did that term come from? It really just means ‘print up money.' But calling it what it is sounds bad. Politicians don't want to say ‘print money.' So they use terms like ‘stimulate' and ‘quantitative easing' instead.”

•  Doug also criticized the way politicians talk about healthcare…

“‘Healthcare' is something you do for yourself. It's diet, it's exercise, it's prudent habits. That's what gives you health. Your insurance policy, whether Obamacare or something else, can't maintain your health,” he said.

“The political classes say ‘healthcare' because everyone wants to be healthy. But what they're really talking about is medical care. Of course, they don't use the term ‘medical care' because it sounds scary. You think of anesthesia and doctors cutting into you. This is why it's so easy to sell health insurance to the average chimpanzee. Everybody wants to insure their health.”