Are you liberal or conservative?

Teeth clench. I maintain my calm. I’m a little of both.

What? Are you liberal or conservative?

An eye twitches. Fingers begin to form into a fist. Nevertheless, I maintain my calm. Neither really, I have beliefs that fall on both sides.

What? Are you liberal or conservative? He laughs at me. He mocks me. You have to be one or the other, dude.

So it’s come to this, has it? Thousands of years of human thought, many vast ideologies, all the great philosophers of the past and present, and it comes down to a single choice: liberal or conservative.

No in-between. Most Americans who fall under “moderate” must be liars. Liberal or conservative. Red state or blue state. Pick one.

No one is fully aligned to the left or the right, and anyone who pretends otherwise is a tool. A complete tool. For further information, see our own College Democrats and College Republicans.

I understand that Americans like things to be simple because all they see is a simple world. Turn on any television, and all you have is Left vs. Right. Democrat or Republican.

They label someone liberal or conservative, assume the stereotypes, and keep those pesky thinking caps locked up. They label Bush conservative. Given any other normal term, yes, he probably would have been (near) conservative, but the terrorist attacks gave his administration the opportunity to expand government power to unprecedented levels, power that will not vanish. None of it’s going away, even if every terrorist in the world is destroyed. In the absence of real enemies, they will create new ones. Deadlier ones.

Yes, College Democrats, even if your beloved candidates had been in office, the same thing would have happened, and even if they win in November, the same basic themes will continue. Enjoy your show.

The label “conservative” carries religion with it, but conservative and Bible-thumper are not synonyms, despite what the past eight years may have told you.

Labels are comfortable. Recognizable. Best of all, they spare people the trouble of thinking.

Why trouble yourself in forming a counterargument when you can label someone “liberal” and toss on them laughable stereotypes? In response to one of my columns, someone called me “liberal” and took a guess at the activities I enjoyed, including chai lattes, wearing berets and protesting.

I have never drunk chai latte, do not wear berets and think protesting, by and large, is a waste of time. The reader in question could not have realized this without asking, but had he taken the time to think in the first place, he would not have made such asinine assumptions.

In all honesty, when people accuse me of being “liberal,” I enjoy it. Why? Because it proves they have no arguments. These silly ad hominem tactics are the final refuge of a man with no arguments, no thoughts and no hope. I win.

Labeling expands beyond this alleged political dichotomy and into other realms, such as religion. I once came upon a chain letter titled “True American” in an Internet forum. To spare my brain cells any further genocide, I will not go find it, but rather, sum it up in a single sentence: Anyone who exercises their First Amendment rights should leave this country.

One poster disagreed, provoking the wrath of his contemporaries. A quick perusal of his profile revealed him to be “Christian,” and one of the posters basically said that any “true Christian” would disagree. I suppose his implication was that “true American” and “true Christian” are one and the same. The crooks in the Moral Majority would be proud.

It also comes in the form of socialism. Or communism. To most people in this country they’re interchangeable. Fifty years after the Red Scare, communism is still seen as the enemy, but it never was the enemy. The enemy was a dictatorship operating under communism. But of course, carrying the label of Communist (or Socialist, both traitorous) guarantees compliance with Stalin’s purges and lifelong allegiance to the North Korean “Eternal Leader” and his son.

Simple divides and stereotypes will end only when Americans see something besides a common division presented to them.

The presentation of liberal or conservative and all the stereotypes they carry helps keep the current two parties in power by not allowing the people ready access to real candidates with real ideas. In time, the Internet may allow people to bypass what they’re fed, but until then, I’ll be joining my fellow liberals at the quad near Humanities.

We’ll dissect the evils of capitalism over $5 lattes while keeping plenty of American flags on hand.

Plenty to keep the fire going.

— Travis Lee is a senior in French. He can be reached at [email protected].