When All Else Fails, Check the Label >>

Since time immemorial, people have had to store stuff, bundle stuff, hide stuff, preserve stuff, reference, and retrieve stuff. This is nothing new. Our minds, the best microchips yet devised, naturally ensure that things are labeled, categorized, and easily referenced. Farmers label the oak barrels by year, field, and the like. The calendar system was firstly a farming tool devised by the ancient agrarian societies to mark when to reap and when to sow; timeframes that often meant life and death. As I sit at my laptop and type this article, I save my articles in labeled root directories. My website thedrakingpoint.com is based off a complex system of HTML, PHP, and CSS code, which labels and categorizes with tags and names. You would think that our nation's Constitution would clearly delineate the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Government, but apparently constitutional creativity rules our "Capitolistic" economy of today.

A recent and belabored annoyance to the political dialog has been a call by mainstream voices for an end to "arbitrary political labeling" of candidates. Noticing this trend almost invariably originating from progressives or Conservatives trying to cover their butts, I am naturally suspect as to who directly benefits from a debate without labels.

Critics call me a Neocon (which in US History actually means something different than Classical Right) and I beam with pride. Liberals call me a bigot because I oppose affirmative action policies, and I swell with abounding joy to know that I comprise the majority on that issue. Leftists say that I am closed-minded for opposing gay marriage, and I glow upon reflecting that 70% of the nation stands with me; even in blue states! Like a classical super villain, every insult a Democrat could hurl at me I would proudly wear, as long as people can see where they fit on my posterboard. In fact, “Classical Liberal” was once used to describe people like me, and ironically it is now used to describe statist socialists. Hence, the connotation that the words convey seems just as powerful as their original use. But at the end of the day, in 2008, we all know what “Liberal” and “Neocon” mean, so the argument that they have no descriptive power is moot.

America, by nature, is a conservative nation. Even in a bad year for Republicans, the race has been neck and neck. This is a public referendum regarding the public's perception of George Bush, not on American Conservatism; elsewise the numbers would not be so close. Conservatives win by running and practicing their true principles, and lose when they do not, or when they begin apologizing for their beliefs. The opposite is true for Democrats as they lose by elaborating on their inner thoughts, their programs, and especially their costs. Hence, they have to work to build a pabulum verisimilitude to Conservatives... or at least moderates.

As a current example of this, John McCain has been a moderate and has earned the title, also cutting back on pork, while Barack Obama, the most radical leftist in our government, tries to move away from MoveOn.org and use his cool baritone to appeal to the undecided. Pretending is how Democrats win elections, while standing on principle--the more difficult of the two--is how we win them. In recent history, George W. Bush ran on a platform of "Compassionate Conservatism." Now, I do not oppose compassion as we are more charitably effusive as a group of people...but manufacturing an apologetic title for your philosophy is reminiscent of Eisenhower, and leads to not only higher expectations that exceed your responsibilities, but jamb your party into brand effacement that leads to historical mediocrity if not hatred from both parties. Eisenhower was not Reagan. Bush signed off on every cut of pork that Reid and Pelosi attached, essentially doing what they wanted. What was his reward for this? What do they call him for this? Did it win points with Liberals? Bush expanded the prescription drug benefit to the horror of most Conservatives, and what did it earn him from Democrats? Left-wing hate. Compromising with a Liberal (especially when you don't have to) will not make him like you, but rather allow him to play on the division that you imbue into your own party and accuse you of the very fiscal irresponsibly that he appended to your bill.

Remember to maintain your identity at all times. Being liked by Liberals is not our mission. They hate us. To explain this, I saw one of the most effective car commercials -- the best I have seen in a long time -- and it was simply average consumers giving testimonials, stating: "every other company compares their car to a Camry. Why not just buy a...Camry?" When we consider how it applies, we cannot run on trying to compare ourselves to Camrys, we have to explain why a Honda is better, and how it is NOT a Camry. Trying to run on compromised likeness turns races into a losing battle between an original and an imitator, and we all know that Coke is more iconic to America than Pepsi is. America does not like cheap knock-offs. Conservatives (and most Republicans) are the Original, since 1789, and we should act like it. We cannot run as "the Diet Liberal."

I constantly get people swooping into my site claiming that they are "moderates" or "independents," and that they detest labels. But at the end of their discussion threads, they promulgate all of the leftist talking points of the DNC to the letter. I call their bluff, and they often leave, angry and butt-hurt. Liberals detest labels because they hate what they have to defend, which is American Socialism, San Francisco, euthanasia, defeatism in the face of Victory, and due process for head-severing jihadists. They know that they are to blame for the meltdown of Fannie and Freddie, and they know that their radical, hateful, and dismal estimations of America don't peddle easily on Main Street. John McCain should stop trying to out-left Obama. He has my vote regardless, seeing he has to stretch left to touch where Obama begins. Yet still, let's be true to what Bush did not always keep.

Liberals know that they are out of touch with the unwashed masses, and the average American is suspicious of government solutions every time they visit the DMV. To compensate for this cognitive dissonance, Liberals must operate in a world of pretend. In this magical world, Crats can ride Falcor the Luckdragon, sing with the Elves about lesbian feminism, and pretend that there is not an appropriate label to haunt them for how they vote. Heed the Tolken didactics that wearing your enemy's ring may make you invisible to peers, but not to your enemy. The real benefit comes as a result of being able to discard a ring that fits on someone else's finger. Don't battle Liberals on the plane of fantasy. They always win there. Instead, stick with labels when they work, and use them. They hate that.

Right now I am making some moro cubano, or black beans and rice for you non-Spanish speakers. I have a box of long-grain rice and a can of beans. No company could stay in business selling rice in a bean-labeled can, or vice-versa. In food production, products are replete with labels, ingredients, directions, contact information, and expiration dates for informed consumers, so I am agape at the discursive half-life of the anti-label wave, and how long it has lasted. Negative ads are not necessarily bad if they point out a trait that your opponent wants to abscond, (such as 20 years of hanging out in a Chicago hate group of black supremacists or partnering with Bill Ayers). You have to call a spade a spade, a leftist a leftist, a Black Liberation Theologian... a Black Liberation Theologian. In the Garden, God's mandate to Adam was the task of naming all that he saw under the sun. If it swims like a duck, and it waddles and quacks like a duck, then Aristotle would already have it tagged and bagged by now.

Labels matter. >>