Reason 87 to blog4peace: stop the name calling!

Let me start with a disclaimer, or a confession, or whatever this is:  I am a Democrat.  I live in South Carolina and I'm old enough to remember when there was (for all practical purposes) ONLY a Democratic Party in SC.  I am a "yellow dog" Democrat, which means, I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran as a Democrat.  My mother told me that if I voted for a Republican, hair would grow on my palms.  I have since found that that isn't necessarily true, but I've had very few temptations to test the threat.  One time someone said to Mom, "I'd bet you'd vote for Satan if he ran as a Democrat."  She thought a minute and said, "Well, yeah, but not in the primary."  This is where I come from. 

Now, let me say that I am very tired of name calling and bad rhetoric on ALL sides of what passes for political debate.  Governor Perry calls a respected economist and member of the Obama administration a "traitor" and laughs when people get upset.  But what does that mean, dude?  Don't you know that treason is a federal crime punishable by death?  You are accusing a man of a federal crime simply because you disagree with him.

And "Nazi."  Can we quit calling each other Nazis?  Do we have no idea what that word means?  Do we have no idea of the eerily efficient bureaucracy of death associated with that party?  We trivialize horror when we speak of "food Nazis" (who are really offensive, but not eerily efficient bureaucrats of death.)  Someone disagrees with us and we compare them to mass murderers.

The same thing applies to all of the words: communist, fascist, traitor, insane, criminally stupid.  Perfectly fine words that are trivialized while the rhetoric of CIVIL POLITICAL DEBATE is twisted into ever escalating words of hatred and separation.

Pull back people.  I'm not saying don't disagree.  I'm not saying don't articulate your points of disagreement.  I'm saying... I'm PLEADING:  Don't use angry emotion-laden key words as symbols for what pass as ideas.  ARTICULATE.  I know you can.  Please.

And Thank you.