Dave made me think, by writing what somebody else said:

Judaism had its worse moment when it became an ism: it got put in its box and stopped changing.

This is probably really obvious, but “-ism” construction is just plain old name calling. Putting things in a box makes you feel powerful, because the metaphor implies that you are on the outside of the box, your victim is on the inside, and therefore your view is the more all-encompassing one, and therefore more correct. The very act of giving something a name gives you a certain power over it. See True Names. Again. If words like ‘liberal’ didn’t exist, crazies like Rush Limbaugh not only wouldn’t have an argument; they wouldn’t have an opponent.

It’s so common to see people using names to brush off someone’s opinion (”Don’t listen to him; he’s just a tory.”) as if this wasn’t the simplest kind of childish name calling. Moral: just because you can name something doesn’t mean you have defeated it.

I said it was probably really obvious.