Letter: Political labels stifle healthy debate

Sunday, Nov. 27, 2005 | 7:53 a.m.

I sometimes feel like Rip Van Winkle who was fast asleep when his world changed. The Democratic Party and Republican Party used to be the two major political parties in our country. But those parties must be dead -- cast upon the dung-heap of politics -- because all I ever hear now is the conservative or liberal label.

But enough with the political attack labels. Labels are only useful on consumer products. They tell me how I'm supposed to wash my clothes; how much fat or salt are in a product; if it's good or bad for me; and what I'm supposed to do if I accidentally ingest a hazardous product or splash it on me.

Political labels restrict the free flow of information and reduce the chances of compromise, just as racial labels limited opportunity for minorities in the '50s and '60s. By labeling ideas and the people who hold those ideas, we marginalize them and make them irrelevant. We polarize all debate by casting it in terms of black or white instead of the kaleidoscope of possibilities that always exist. And, when our government legislates in those narrow extremes, we become no better than any other country ruled by extremists or dictators.

Let's stop polarizing and paralyzing people and ideas, and move on as Americans.

Dixie D. Jackson

Las Vegas