Jonah Goldberg rebuts for National Review Online the arguments supporting a new group called No Labels:
These no-labelers start from the premise that if you want what?s best for the country, you must declare independence from your political party, because Democrats and Republicans alike are either politically brainwashed dupes or are less than fully patriotic.
Such fuzzy thinking is a symptom of the growing fetishization of the ?center? as an ideologically distinct and superior location and ?independents? as a philosophically coherent group. In reality, there is no single center in American politics, and there are many different kinds of independents. …
If I tell you I?m a conservative Republican, you?ll have no idea what my views are on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or beef jerky, but you?ll have a good idea of what I think about taxes and foreign policy. No, partisan labels aren?t perfect; both parties have ample disagreements within their ranks on pretty much every issue. But they?re better than nothing. They?re clarifying, not confusing. In other words, labels aren?t ?meaningless? as so many self-described independents claim, but meaningful. If anything, what?s meaningless is the claim that you don?t believe in labels when obviously anybody who speaks intelligently about anything must use them.
What no-labelers really mean is that they don?t like inconvenient disagreements that hinder their agenda. And that?s what is so troubling, indeed so undemocratic, about this claptrap. When they claim we need to put aside labels to do what?s right, what they are really saying is you need to put aside what you believe in and do what they say.
Goldberg made a similar point during an interview with CarolinaJournal.tv in connection with a September 2009 appearance at UNC-Chapel Hill.
