I am a citizen of the United States of America by birth, but American by choice. Two very important labels that I am proud to wear. Here are a few others that other people have attempted to apply to me:

conservative, liberal

libertarian, Italian-American

 political animal

catholic, Mormon

moron, american

invader, killer

pro-life, pro-choice

anti-gay, homophobic

misogynistic, christian

atheist, centrist

RINO, republican

…and many more.

So who cares? THEY do. Why does it matter what labels are applied to each of us?It WORKS. Sticks and stones right? No.

From RedState and other conservative news and opinion sharing sites we learn more and more about the now infamous book by Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals. A favorite of Alinsky’s acolytes is Rule 12: “Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.” What does that mean? and How does that use labeling?

One of the most recent and highly effective examples of this was during the last presidential election cycle. Romney was generally considered to be a good business man but not very open, Mormon, rich, and fairly honest with his personal opinions when not in a potentially hostile situation.

“Pick a target” – Romney picked himself and was made an easier target by slowly, very slowly, and narrowly beating out the other republican candidates for the nomination. We won’t explore the ridiculousness of that primary, as many others have done so ad nauseam.

“Freeze it” – Romney was so thoroughly and effectively characterized as being “out of touch” and “too rich” by his primary rivals that it wasn’t very difficult for the already effective Obama re-election campaign to continue and expand on the assumptions of the original arguments. Romney was ‘frozen’ in the minds of many- democrat, republican and independent- long before his actual presidential campaigns even began.

“Personalize it” – The wounds inflicted by his republican counter parts to his personal image were left festering after the primary and the Obama camp kept them open and bleeding for the rest of the campaign cycle. Romney not appearing personally open and inviting destroyed any hope of overcoming the continued ad hominem attacks from Obama.

“Polarize it” – By the time that anyone could vote for Romney, he had long been shoved to one side and marginalized in both parties as a sub-par choice. The people eventually chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils.

so… whats the point of all this?

We, as individuals and a party, can no longer allow ourselves to be acted upon by outside forces. We must become the dictators of our own fortunes. We the people must become such a sudden and powerful force that we cannot be manipulated and our focus shifted. We must develop one dream, one vision and one purpose. As we are, we are weak, because we are divided. We must decide to either raze the house or make it better than it was.

Divided we are weak and malleable. United we are strong and undeniable.

Lets choose to not just be citizens but Americans.