Labels are dangerous things, in anyone’s hands. The Left, the Right, liberal, conservative – these are all terms to be used with caution, with the understanding that each label refers not to an abstract category (whether we judge it good or bad) but flesh-and-blood human beings. My family is Polish, and I grew up appreciating more than one culture at the same time; I study the history of political ideologies; I’ve been Editor-in-Chief of The Stanford Review. These three experiences have attuned me to the dangers of language as a tool of division, whatever our affiliations. Now, weeks before leaving Stanford, I hope to convey this message: let’s be careful what we call other people.

Since the French Revolution, Western civilization has become obsessed with labels. We pick our groups, draw our division lines, and define our enemies based on the groups we’ve constructed. But “enemy” status is a serious thing. We all know what came out of this in the twentieth century: the extermination of Hitler’s “racial” enemies and Stalin’s “class” enemies, as well as a proliferation of ethnic and religious conflict. Whenever we use a label to distinguish ourselves from someone else, we are making a value judgment against them, designating them either as objects of desire or – more often – of stigma. Stigma turns into “otherization,” and otherization takes us down a slippery slope toward dehumanization and abuse.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Czech novelist Milan Kundera wrote, “What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.” Kundera’s “Left” was not the same as Ann Coulter’s or Bill O’Reilly’s “Left.” For Kundera, the Left was characterized not by welfare programs, opposition to the death penalty, or an even impractical approach to policy-making; the Left designated any utopian visionary who sought to exclude from civil society all forms of thought that didn’t conform with his personal “Grand March.”

Not only were Lenin, Stalin, and Pol Pot members of Kundera’s Left, but so were Hitler, Mussolini, and – to read ex post facto into his analysis – Saddam Hussein. The Left was not so much about autocracy as it was about the suppression of all counterrevolutionary activity. The “revolution,” however, was defined as whatever the utopian visionary (or megalomaniac) in charge believed it to be.

Most people in Western civilization today – allowing for huge differences between conceptions of Left and Right in the United States and Europe, as well as within Europe – would not see the Left as Kundera saw it. This is why I am loathe to use terms like “Left” and “Right,” “liberal” and “conservative.” In Europe, Milton Friedman typifies “liberals,” while in the U.S. we think of Ted Kennedy. Following Kundera’s logic, if the Left is utopian, the Right must be pragmatic (not fascist). But the 700 Club is as unpragmatic as the Sierra Club; then again, neither is despotically utopian. So both defy Left and Right classifications.

When self-professed American conservatives talk about “leftist” pro-choice or pro-affirmative action agitation, they’re in fact equating these activists with Hitler and Stalin. This is wrong. Both Democrats and Republicans can be on the Left; both can be on the Right. The Left-Right classification is a question of attitude, of behavior. Tolerance and pluralism fall in the middle, and so should our language.

If we’re going to talk about politics, let’s talk about issues. If we’re going to talk about philosophies of life, let’s be specific. The ideas of Left and Right should remain where they belong – at the extremes. If history teaches us one thing, it’s that otherization can be painful and violent beyond our wildest dreams. Language matters; let’s stop acting as though it were otherwise.