I have commented elsewhere on the confusions in the political landscape caused by blurring at the edges of the venerable political designations of right wing and left wing. Venerable because the terms were first associated with the seating arrangements in a long-defunct French parliament. See extract below (source, Wikipedia) .
The term comes originally from the legislative seating arrangement during the French Revolution, when republicans who opposed the Ancien Régime were commonly referred to as leftists because they sat on the left side of successive legislative assemblies.
To claim that a person or institution is today either left-wing or right-wing is to subscribe to a False Dichotomy: An advocate represents an issue as "black or white" when in fact the reality is "shades of grey".
The political false dichotomy left/right survives I suspect because the terms have become a shorthand description with which a protagonist can berate an opponent or claim group membership. "You are a leftie" is intended as an insult when used by a self-described RWDB (Right Wing Death Beast); "I am a leftie" is a badge of honour when used by a self-described leftie. And vice versa.
Neither label is very useful, given that the meaning of the political terms left and right in Western political culture have almost inverted on several dimensions over time (eg authoritarianism).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The Skeptic's Field Guide by Theo Clark and Jef Clark is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
3 comments:
A colleague of mine, an avowed leftist made a comment recently about "Zionism" which was a thinly veiled attack on jews in general. He clearly expected me to agree with him. I said "I'm sorry Carl, I know it's now fashionable on the left to be anti-semitic... call me old-fashioned, but I just don't hate jews". This comment had the desired effect. Conversation terminated, and future presumptions about my political views now unlikely.
I remember a story my brother told me about a political science course he took. He really ripped on the class textbook for not adequately exploring the downsides of a two-party system. The one he specifically mentioned, if I remember it correctly, is that the two parties will find some specific issues to disagree on, and (consciously or unconsciously) distract the public from their areas of agreement, which often aren't in the public's best interest.
He said the right-wingers in the class got all foamy and began construction of men made of straw. Don't remember what the left-wingers did, if anything.
Bronze Dog - Were the right-wingers in the class of the: (a) laissez-faire capitalism and socially conservative variety, or (b)the libertarian variety, or (c)the "strong-man" authoritarian variety? Were the left-wingers in the class (a)wealthy chardonnay socialists or (b)blue-collar unionists? Or perhaps (c)Trotskyists, (d)anarchists, (e)Stalinists, (f)Maoists, (g)Spartacists, (h)Peoples' Front for the Liberation of Judea, (i)Judean People's Front, (j)Peoples' Liberation Front of Judea...
Left wing or right wing - whatever... I just can't stand control freaks.
Post a Comment