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“Nobody should be for reckless demonization, but one man’s reckless demonization is another man’s truth-telling, as the design of No Labels itself would seem to suggest. […] [S]uch movements are primarily defined by distaste. That is a powerful emotion. But in the end, distaste is primarily an aesthetic feeling, not a moral or political or ideological one. An aesthetic is not an organizing principle, because it is a principle of exclusion, not of inclusion — those bright lines are designed to keep things out, not bring them in.”
— JOHN PODHORETZ - 12.06.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)
Political discourse is as realistic as polite warfare; and equally achievable. Nevertheless, it behooves us to strive for a semblance of an exchange of ideas that most often are intensely confrontational. And the reason it is incumbent upon civilized people to strive for an alternative to exchanging artillery shells is that verbal exchanges tend to be less lethal.
It is prudent to begin by trying to understand what constitutes so-called "labels" and why they are generally unproductive if a negotiated understanding is the objective of the "discourse". First of all, it is not true that every descriptive noun is a label. After all, a spade is actually a spade, if, in fact, it resembles a spade-like shovel. Second of all, there exist spectacularly life-like examples of racists, Jew-haters, socialists, and, dare I say it, assholes.
So the term "label" in discourse has more to do with usage than definition. If, for example, one were to use the term Jew-hater in reference to Helen Thomas, or the term "asshole" in addressing Barney Frank, that would not necessarily constitute an instance of labeling. On the other hand, calling President Obama an "ideologue" is an instance of labeling, because everyone knows he is not one. Just ask Him.
A reasonable rule of thumb for online "discourse", it seems to me, is a generalized "Godwin's law", wherein any flagrant usage of a descriptive noun that is clearly intended as an ad hominem attack forfeits (terminates in failure) the debate.
Post 1,502 We don't need no stinking labels!
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