name-calling

the late Peter Opie, an authority on children's rhymes, said that the well-known doggerel on name-calling should be rephrased: "Sticks and stones just break my bones. / It's words that really hurt me." Name-calling tends to be associated with children, and it is indeed childish, but many political debates degenerate into a more sophisticated, pseudo-intellectual kind of name-calling. Miss Manners (Judith Martin) says, "The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others." Long ago, Daniel Webster pointed out that "anger is not an argument." Neither is name-calling.