A belated New Year's resolution

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions. But I have made some this year.

Most notable, I would like to try and reduce my dependance on certain words and monikers. I am trying to use words like liberal and conservative, right-wing and left-wing, and others of that ilk less often.

I would like to be able to evaluate and relay the idea of other without having to rely on branding the person or opinion as liberal or conservative. Words like that are always under-defined and over-interpreted. I can describe the person next to me as being liberal, but what does that really mean? We live in an age when many Republicans brand anyone less than a flag-toting, chest-thumping, Glory-be-to-God-crying American as a liberal America hater. All people are a little of one and some of the other: socially liberal and financially conservative or t'other way 'round.

Unfortunately, as soon as someone says liberal these days, the image of a penniless hippie comes to mind; as soon as someone says conservative, one can't help but think of a legislator who will lower taxes, brutalize criminals and rule the people like a king.

I think what this might come down to is a desire to be ruled less by my own history and by my ideology. It is so easy to rely on the fact that I have been a liberal minded individual my whole life. My parents are, my sister is, my friends are, the people I work with are. I feel that I live too much in an echo-chamber where my opinions are repeated by others close to me thus giving the impression that everyone thinks the way I do.

But clearly the rest of the US doesn't.

So, the idea is to, shock! evaluate arguments without appealing to the fact that some Republican forced it out of his blowhole. It will be difficult. Labeling something makes it easier to ridicule and I love to ridicule (even if I haven't done much of that on this page in the past couple of weeks). But I think this will be a benefit to me in the long term.