There has never been an age as wary as ours of the tricks words can play, obscuring distinctions and smoothing over the corrugations of the actual world. That wariness is implicit in the way we describe words as labels. 我々がある言葉をlabelsとして描写（捉える）する方法において暗示的。つまり、ある言葉をlabelと考える時、その言葉に対して用心するということ。

People tend to reserve “label” for social classifications like “fascist,” “depressive” or “delinquent,” always with the implication that the word is either misleading or, at best, a convenience. わかりやすく言うと、ファシストなどの言葉をlabelとみなす時は常に、その言葉は「誤解させるような言葉」、あるいはどんなに控えめに言っても「便宜上の言葉」でしかないということをimplicate暗に言っている、ということ。

Calling a word a label leaves us free to reject it. Yet as advertisers and marketers know, our mistrust of words doesn't inoculate us against them. We may think of language as an arbitrary system of classification. But we can't help reifying the categories language carves out. 本来、任意（勝手につけられた）の言葉が描くカテゴリーを増強せざるを得ないとは、元々は任意であっても、長い間使われているうちに、明白な意味合い、イメージを持つようになるということです。言葉とはそういう感覚的なもので、長い間使っているうちに、（個人差はあっても）その言葉を使う人（国民とか県民とか）の中で共通の明白な意味合い、イメージを持つようになるという不思議な存在なのです。

The words we dismiss as labels can still exalt or disturb us, which is why we're always having to rationalize away the dissonance, like the shopper who justifies paying a 500% premium for a tote bag with a Fendi logo on the grounds you get a better grade of vinyl. わかりやすく言うと、頭の中では、この言葉はlabelだよと思っていても、どうしても影響を受けてしまう。この不一致がいやなので、なんとか正当化しようといろいろ理由をこじつけるわけです。ちょうど、“ブランド”の持つ力に負けて、６倍の値段を払ってしまうことに対して、「いいビニールだから、この値段は当然」と、自分をあるいは周囲の人を納得させようとする、あほな購入者のように。

It's hard to think of any words that justify the labels more than “liberal” and “conservative.” No one would deny their usefulness as approximate handles: “Liberals have been critical of the Patriot Act.”　But it often seems as if they serve more to pigeonhole than to explain. Certainly the categories are anything but eternal. It was only during Franklin D. Roosevelt's second term that “liberal” and “conservative” emerged out of a welter of competing terms to become the defining opposition of American politics. To Roosevelt, liberals and conservatives represented “two schools of political belief” about how active a role government should take in fixing problems. A lot of people still see that as the core distinction. But the implications of both terms are different from what they were in Roosevelt's day. We no longer think of liberals and conservatives merely as adherents of different schools of political belief. Now the categories go much deeper―to lifestyle, values and even traits of character. The shift in perceptions began with the onset of the culture wars in the 1970s, when the right began to depict liberals as elitists out of touch with “mainstream values.” That was also when consumer preferences started standing in for ideological characterizations. Liberals were tarred in a kind of guilt by brand association, as Volvo-driving, brie-eating. Those stereotypes may not be accurate, but they succeed in turning “liberal” into shorthand for a self-indulgent yuppie attitude. Nowadays, the media almost never use phrases like “working-class liberal”―working-class Americans are disqualified from being liberals not because of their political views but because they can't afford the lifestyle.

リベラルと言えば、高学歴、高収入で非道徳的というlabelを長年貼られてきたせいで、メディアはworking-class liberalという言い方はしない。working-class Americansにはliberalの資格がないのは、working-classの米国人はそういう（贅沢な）ライフスタイルをする余裕がないから、という本来の（政治的な）意味からは、かけ離れた理由によるのだ。