Capitalism - the Ultimate Religion

[Tiberius]

The result was a partly correct quote and partly a new statement. But by no stretch of the imagination can the whole resulting sentence be described as a quote, I think we are agreed on that.

No we aren't agreed on that. The entire resulting sentence can be described as quote, because it is something Zen Badger came up with. Quotes aren't reserved for the rich and famous; anyone can make them.

so there is no way that I or anybody can point to a place where Zen Badger attributed a quote to Churchill

Excellent. So if the quote isn't attributed to Churchill, it can't be a misquote, since (as you pointed out) a misquote is quoting incorrectly. If there is no source given for the quote, you have no basis for saying it is a misquote. Similarly, if it is clear that the quote is being created by the speaker (Zen Badger), then it cannot be a misquote, unless you want to say that the speaker is misquoting himself on the fly...

hence my personal preference for using the word misquote, which conveys the idea of inaccurate translation unambiguously.

...despite the fact that there was no inaccuracy in the quote, seeing as it was original.

Add to this my personal view that Winston Churchill was such a master of the English language that his original words really need no amendment, and I think my use of the word misquote is entirely appropriate.

In this case, the original words had nothing to do with capitalism, so the amendment by Zen Badger was entirely reasonable. The sentence structure (X is the worst system, but for all the others) is a very nice way of putting things, but Churchill was a very busy man and I didn't expect him to make a large number of similar quotes for the benefit of anyone in the future who wants to convey ideas differently.

As ever I would say these things are probably a matter of personal preference - people do use the same words differently, after all.

No, that's just you. Oh, and anyone else who objects or doesn't know about the dictionary.

ultimately I wouldn't take away somebody's right to choose words themselves - if we did that, we might as well stick a gag on their mouths and ban them from speaking or even writing, and that would be an appalling affront to human dignity, wouldn't it?

People can choose words themselves; nobody is stopping them. What we do stop people from doing is choosing arbitrary definitions for words as you seem to love doing. We have a set of words in a language, and they all have specific definitions as laid out in the dictionary. You and all others here are politely asked to use those dictionary definitions (Oxford English Dictionary or Cambridge Dictionary are very good places to start) when speaking here.