Lets call it the IGLT —

Ideological Generalization Limitation Treaty.

Right wingers will agree to stop talking about “free markets”, “limited government”, and “individual freedom” IN THE CONTEXT OF SERIOUS POLICY DISCUSSIONS. In return, liberal columnists will stop trying to score points by irrelvantly degrading these to-vague-for-use concepts.

Then in the face of the Katrina tragedy we can focus on real questions such as Hillary Clinton’s:

“Would FEMA have performed better if it were an independent agency as it was before it was subsumed in the Department of Homeland Security?”

Hell, we can even consider absurd libertarian rhetorical bromides such as:

“Would there have been poor people without cars in New Orleans if it weren’t for welfare?”

Let’s just leave sickly vague rhetoric about the “free market” to philosophico-economic analysis.

It’s not that the generalizations should not be discussed in serious policy discussions and should be in philsophico-economic analysis.

Rather, its that IF we’re going to use them in policy discussions, they need to be put conspicuously in service of the actual problem at hand. Instead they are usually trumpet blasts to rally ideoligical supporters and alarm bells to warn ideological opponents. This is WAY counterproductive and trivializes the importance of the actual issues.

Also, on reflection, I think that the risk of ideological communication breakdowns in the use of these concepts is even greater in scholarly analysis than in policy debates. The law that 90% of everything is crap (whatever its called) applies with full force to these literatures. In fact its probably more like 97%.