Labeling is Disabling

by Peter Saint-Andre

2002-04-26

Thanks go to Eliot for a pointer to a blog entry by Doc Searls on political labels. It seems that Doc is something of a left-libertarian, too, though he feels labels are not very helpful. I must agree. While I've somewhat settled on the term "progressive libertarian", even that doesn't quite capture my thinking about politics (which in turn is downstream from more deeply-held ideas). Given my view that labels don't tend to be fully descriptive, it's ironic that some people know me mainly for The Ism Book, which carefully catalogues all the various pigeonholes of philosophical discourse. Probably one reason I haven't updated that resource since 1996 is that I don't find the activity of fitting square pegs into round holes all that satisfying any longer. But I really do need to complete a good once-over on the Ism Book, since I'm rather embarrassed by much of it now. Maybe by the end of 2002 I'll get around to it....


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