LABELS ARE LAZY - OR WORSE

I've been thinking more about the way labeling people or putting them in boxes, is destructive of both useful thinking and charity towards one's fellow man.

As Paul Mallinder commented on an earlier post, "we just label people when our reason isn't up to the game."

Label-stickers are lazy, or stupid, or vindictive, or dishonest, or I know not what. They dodge the issue of engaging people with whom they disagree, and just dismiss them.

For example, how about 'anti-Semite'? What do the users of this label mean, if not anti-Jew or anti-Israel? A true anti-Semite must also be anti-Arab and anti-Maltese, as both Arabs and Maltese are at least partly Semitic, and both speak Semitic languages. Speak plainly and use 'anti-Jewish' or 'anti-Israel', depending on what you mean. To engage the people is to engage the issues.

'Nazi' is applied indiscriminately to racists. However, under the prussian Bismarck, Adalbert Falk's falk laws expelled Catholic Religious (See Hopkins's "The Wreck of the Deutschland"). Further legislation deprived Poles of the right to speak Polish in school, sell their homes to other Poles, and more. The aim was to eliminate Polishness. IN 1900!

Racist? Very.

Anti-Jewish? No anti-Słowenski.

Nazi? Not under Bismarck, but later.

One more example, ridiculous, horrible, but true.

I had been in Poland about a week when a German, about 30 years old, asked me what I thought of Poles. I replied that I had not had time to form an impression.

So he told me. He said that the Poles were dirty, lazy, ignorant, and poor. Their food was unhealthy and their roads terrible.

He then said that the word Slav is derived from slave, because the Slavonic people exist to serve the teutonic races.

I could have labeled him 'ignorant nazi scumbag', but I didn't (tee hee!). Oh, I wanted to.

I was kind and explained that the Słowenik word which is known as Slav is cognate with Sławny = famous. The word 'slave' is derived from Slav, not vice-versa. I did not label him, but I wanted to kill him.

I then told him about the post WW2 Morgenthau plan, and its vision, thwarted by Roosevelt, of the permanent partition of Germany and its reduction to an agricultural economy.

I ended by telling him what I thought about his country's history.

As to a worthy label? Maybe 'evil idiot'.