Labels are for grocery items

I was tweeting with my friend Nic, who labels himself as a conservative Republican in Mississippi, when he asked the question, "Do you think I'm stupid?" My tongue-in-cheek response was: "You are a conservative in the poorest state in the nation...next question..."

By definition a conservative is someone tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions. I personally myself will never want to be tagged with a label that infers that I am predisposed to the notion of maintaining Mississippi as a poor state, because that is the condition we are in.

That is why I am against this labeling system we have adopted in the political process. Human beings that fully use their power of reason, especially in the realm of public policy, are too complex to be neatly placed into that kind of a box. People that tend to think in the big picture range from maintaining the status quo to challenging traditional forms (liberal). I know I have during my time in public office, but outsiders want to try to put me in a box as well.

In Mississippi, the opposition wants to quickly say that I am a liberal because I am a member of The Democratic Party. When I took the position to limit abortion or protect the right to bear arms, fellow Democrats accused me of being a conservative in Democratic clothing. The truth of the matter is that I was born Erik Robert Fleming, the name that my parents agreed upon after much negotiation. I am a child/creation of God and I am an American citizen because I was born in this country. I am identified as a person of African heritage, but there are Sioux, Cherokee and Caucasian bloodlines in my DNA as well. I am a Christian because I profess that He is the Savior of the World. I affiliate politically with the Democrats because I personally believe in government of the people, by the people and for the people.

That is enough labeling for me. I do not like to be boxed into a corner because of who I align with or what I look like. I want to be respected for being me and I would want my ideas to be heard regardless of the audience. Unfortunately, that is not the political system we live in and that is why we are in gridlock while our financial house slowly crumbles away. We are too busy trying to appease a group we want to be labeled with instead of pursuing solutions to move our state and country forward.

Staying locked into a labeling system is a conservative idea. Standing out and making a difference is a liberal idea. What would Jesus, my spiritual inspiration, do? According to the Bible, Jesus' disciples were gathering wheat on the Sabbath day. Some Pharisees, the conservatives of their day, questioned Him. He stated that men had to eat on the Sabbath as well. That is the pragmatic, yet liberal, concept humans should embrace: doing what is right when it is right.

I never want to be stuck in anything I do. If there is a better way to move forward, then I am all for it. The only conservative position any human should be boxed into is when we are in the grave. Until then we should be free to hold on to values we embrace, yet shake things up when needed. We idolize coaches that use that philosophy, but we condemn politicians. That is strange to me when the end game in both arenas in winning.

I am not a tomato can to be placed on a shelf in the canned food section of the super market for convenience. I am a human being, born free and refusing to be bound by the chains of society. I am a free thinker. To label me is de-humanizing and that is not what God intended for me.

Mississippi and America deserves men and women in public service who adhere to the philosophy of thinking about the next generation, not the next election. You can't have that when you marginalize them into labels. I am not convenient, I am complicated. Accept me for who I am.

If we all respected each other like that, then we would truly have a better government that represented us and our best interests, in my humble opinion.

Comments

  1. Erik, with all due respect brother, this entire rambling rampage is prefixed on false interpretation of what YOU think conservative political policy is. It's more so big C conservative NOT in the everyday usage of the word little c conservative- meaning no change. Brother, please.

    In the same breath, a reserved definition of liberal could mean open to everything of change including extreme radicalism. Labeling is not the problem. The problem is when people try to hide what their true positions are on any particular matter to be perceived as one label when they're really another.

    You referenced the only labels you want to have put on you. Well just as you have choice in which labels you want, so does everyone else. It’s all labeling.

    Since the founding of this republic, we've been able to progress in one way or the other based on which labels advance. Federalists vs Anti-federalist, abolitionists vs segregationists, Christians vs agnostics etc etc. Nothing is wrong with labeling.

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  2. To suggest this is a rambling rampage is very condescending and very revealing. It is a declaration of freedom from limited mindsets. Just because you point to historical references in our political history does not mean that it is proper, it just means that political strategy for hundreds of years has tried to do what I speak against. It is convenient and that is good for you. I choose what God meant for me, a more intellectual approach, therefore I won't be so easily duped as those who use the labeling method...

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