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Anders Hultman wrote:
On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Tanya Mayer Photography wrote:
This may seem uneducated of me - but I here you all saying "i'm right of centre", "he's left", "left winged", "right winged" etc, can someone please explain to me just what these terms mean?
This dates back to the French parliament of 1789 where the radicals that wanted to change society towards more equality and freedom sat to the left as seen from the rostrum, and the conservatives that wanted to maintain the old system sat to the right. Since then, liberal politics has been labeled "left" and conservative politics has been labeled "right".
In the mid 19th century, an even more radical ideology was formed,
socialism, to the "left" of the then current left. This blurred the
left--right concept somewhat, since the liberals then became "middle" or
even "right". The left--right concept became even more blurred in the
1930's when fascism and nazism was placed off the scale to the right
("extreme right") even though many people think that they have more in
common with the communists on the "extreme left" (left of the socialists) than with the conservatives traditionally labeled "right".
Nowadays, it can be hard to determine what should be called "left" and "right" and there also are big differences within each side, so one should generally ask for clarification when these terms are used. Especially in an international context such as this.
anders ------------------------- http://anders.hultman.nu/ med dagens bild och allt!
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
"You might as well accept people as they are, you are not going to be able to change them anyway."
