“Racist!”

“Misogynist!”

“NAZI!!!”

You may be a member of the Amish community if you haven’t heard someone hurl one of these insults at another individual. Given our cultural climate, you yourself have likely been on the receiving end of such demeaning labels.

I count myself in that latter club. “Misogynist” is the label that I’ve had slapped on me over the years, a fact I still scratch my head over, as I enjoy being a woman and simply want to help my fellow females enjoy their womanhood as well.

Such labels are certainly frustrating, yet they shouldn’t be a cause for stress. The reality is, those who throw around such names do so at the expense of their own reputations, for name-calling is usually a sign that a person can’t hold their own in a factual debate or argument.

Although it seems like calling people Nazis or other names is only a recent trend, it’s apparently been around for at least a quarter of a century, which political commentator Patrick Buchanan records in his 2001 book “Death of the West,” noting the popularity of “calling opponents Nazis, fascists, and Klansmen.”

Buchanan lists several rewards that those who use such puerile name-calling can reap.

First, it ostracizes the enemy with a divide-and-conquer approach. The person who uses these insults, Buchanan notes, “places an opponent outside the company of decent men” and “discredits in advance what he says.” A person separated from his comrades automatically loses his moral support and will to fight, while being framed as one of “the baddies” lands a serious psychological blow.

Second, such name-calling puts the opponent automatically on the defense, for it “forces him to defend his character rather than his positions.” Those playing defense are already in a losing position, yet in this case, the losing position is made even worse, for it forces a person to focus on the superficial, physical aspects of the debate, rather than the deeper, thoughtful aspects of his argument.

Finally, throwing such names at opponents strokes the pride and ego of the one doing so. “The more one demonizes an enemy, the more one ‘heroizes’ oneself,” Buchanan writes.

Perhaps this last reason best explains why name-calling is growing so prevalent, for, in a day when podcasters, commentators, and influencers jostle for likes, clicks, and shares like fish at feeding time, hurling baseless insults at others is the quickest, albeit most mindless, way to stand out from the crowd and eliminate the competition.

But Buchanan’s statement also hints at a potential solution to our insult-hurling culture, namely, the restoration of true heroes.

What makes a hero? Most of us would say a hero is someone who completes great exploits or does courageous things.

Mid-20th century thinker and author Russell Kirk had a different definition for hero, however. To him, a hero is one who practices the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance – and perhaps even the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. The opposite of these virtues, Kirk writes, are the “Seven Deadly Sins [of] pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth.”

Ironically, those same seven sins are at the root of the name-calling that is so widespread today. As mentioned above, calling others names props ourselves up, putting us in a position to gain (pride, avarice, lust, and gluttony). It simultaneously pulls others down (anger, envy), while also giving us the easy way out of arguments (sloth).

To decrease the problem of mindless, vitriolic name-calling, then, it seems that we must cancel such sins by instilling the virtues instead. And these virtues, Kirk notes, are best taught not so much by tutors, but by “the men of the old families” – the fathers and the grandfathers passing down their wisdom and insight from generation to generation.

Yet present fathers, grandfathers, and solid, whole families in general have been going extinct for many years. Without fathers around, there will be less virtue. And with less virtue, there will be more of the Seven Deadly Sins. And with more of the Seven Deadly Sins, there will clearly be more heightened insults and name-calling, something of which, let’s face it, we’re all growing quite weary.

A vicious cycle? Yes. But even the most vicious cycles can be broken. The question is, are we willing to swim upstream and choose a different way, embracing true heroism while rejecting the cop-out of mindless name-calling?

—

This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image credit: Pexels