Dr's In: Labels are for soup cans and candy bars

Liberal, conservative, moderate; blah, blah, and blah.  It’s hard to express an opinion on about anything without getting labeled these days.  While ringing up my order in Wal-Mart last week I argued that I should have been charged only $4.69 not $4.99 for some socks I purchased.  The polite cashier arranged someone to check the pricing.  A loud impatient voice behind me shouted, “What are you a Right-Wing fiscal conservative?”

I had to admit the man caught me speechless.  I had been called many things in my life, but never a right wing fiscal conservative. I am usually hanging out with those folks labeled, “tax and spend” liberals. It turns out the $4.99 was correct and I paid it without a whimper and went off with my argyles.  

I realized how polarized a nation we have become.  There is no middle ground anymore.  If you support Obama, well you’re a socialist, a “lib”, somehow whatever you are supporting gets lost in the label.  Agree with a Tea Party concern and your labeled right wing, stupid, or an ideologue.  What was the concern anyway?  Has anybody thought beyond the fact that the Tea Party supported it?

I am guilty of this judgment by association; we all are.  This whole country has become a mob divided by labels.  The labels have become more important than the issues at hand.  Can everyone, anyone agree that there is something wrong with this picture.

Labels have to go. We have to look carefully at the issues and decide individual merit.  Just because a Republican conservative supports a particular Bill or direction does not allow the assumption that such a policy is wrong, any more than a recommendation from the Obama Administration would automatically align Republicans against it.  This is no way to do business and move our country forward.

We have become a great nation due to our ability to improve our living standards and a history of working together in spite of diversity.  We are now paying a price for rigid ideologies on both sides of the aisle.  We can do better than this.