RE: One Difference Between Conservative, Liberal, and Libertarian
What a bizarre way to think. People who collect ideas, choose favorites, and repeat them think very differently than people who create ideas. You seem wholly unacquainted with the process of original thought. I am going to stop well short of condemning your thinking as 'social memetic bartering' because it is a vital function. You can think of it as the role of the merchant in the economy of thought. Our society is suffering from masses that can't perform the filtering function of that role adequately - you seem to have that well in hand.
Now I am not interested in making the claim that merchants serve a lesser role than the producer. There is clearly a symbiosis present, and if you remove either, the other will be diminished. So, let me align our interests as an alternative to contention by employing a common agenda. We are each trying to improve society. That puts us on the same side, and I think we can see that not everyone is on that side of things.
Now, your piece here is a pretty fair example of walking people through the filtering process as it specifically pertains to the labels you chose. That is good. Perhaps it can elevate some 'consumer' level thinkers of our society to the more active role of 'merchant' if they can improve their filtering abilities from your example. Where you don't do well is where you package your ideas as dogma. This framing may sell better because it neatly digests the ideas into parcels that are ready for the consumer to attach emotion and action to, but it is counter to the process of idea creation.
There is an unintended poison contained in what you are propagating. You are teaching people a behavior of accepting labels whole by framing them as an all or nothing dogma. The 'producer's' process of creation always involves dissecting ideas and labels into more fundamental parts before assembling them in a new form. Even if you perform the 'merchant's' job of filtering high quality ideas, you are still disseminating them with a debilitating quality.
Let me suggest that it is counter to your purpose by showing you how it acts against it. If there is a class of people who are self-servingly conditioned by government to be consumers, your reinforcing that conditioning with dogma serves the purpose of that conditioning. That conditioning locks the consumer into dependence on both the producer and the merchants. In the clearest cases, no capacity for filtering or synthesis is present in the consumer and they are forced into the economy of thought at the lowest level. By packaging your information to incite emotion or action you access the market of consumer created by the government. You may think of it as a bribe paid to you by the system for the work that you do to reinforce the conditioning of the market. You become an accomplice in precisely what you are acting to oppose. That may literally be diabolical.. Somehow I don't think you are the author of that intent.
If you were to instead do part of the role of the producer, and break apart the labels, at least a little bit, and seal it all back together with some questions, you would simultaneously decrease the role of the producer and require the consumer to do some work before they can use it as well. That is a fairly sophisticated process and it can only be navigated by the deliberate intention to do so. The payoff for that effort is that it spreads by destroying the system that has everyone enslaved into its roles. It flattens the system and frees its participants. Isn't that consistent and even necessary to achieving what you are trying to do?
Of course, there is a limit to how far an idea like this can penetrate. It appears to be limited by the free will of the lowest rung of the thought economy - the consumers. If they choose the 'sin' of laziness and insist that their ideas be spoon fed to them, they are trapped into the system, and more or less create it around themselves, complete with all its failings and horrors - to serve their need. That seems to be an inescapable consequence, and a proper reward.
I hope that this wasn't TLDR - my capacity to articulate this more concisely is apparently limited. If you don't mind, I think I will repackage this reply on my own blog because the process of replying clarified some of my own thinking. Feel free to take as your own any part of this that is useful to you - that is what I always do. Ideas want to be free.
I don't think you understood the point of Ben's article. It wasn't about the labels, it was about the principles the labels represent, and an analysis of how those fundamental principles differ. Labels are shorthand for ideas, and ideas matter immensely.
I admit, the opening of my response was a bit of a gambit, to emotionally involve for the purpose of initial relevancy to the reader. That being said, Ben's piece is essentially a discussion of how the labels compare to each other and which one is right. To one who doesn't use group-think labels, the article contains vastly more words than ideas. I think it actually does do a bit of the 'producers' job while slightly 'souring the milk' to the consumers. In that way, it strikes just the balance I was proposing the 'merchant's role should.
Because I wrote about the process of Ben's article, rather than the purpose, I can see how that could be construed as missing the point. A good discussion should add detail to the topic, which I have done. If you understand the purpose of my reply, you realize it is to convey something more fundamental than Ben's point.