Confusion reigns supreme in the puzzling and sometimes rancorous discussions of who or what is a “right winger” and a “left winger” in the realm of modern and often rancorous and deliberately misleading American political debate. Most of us have been programmed for decades by the liberal “main stream” (left wing) media (most newspapers, all TV network news, talking “heads” on most cable news shows, etc.) to accept their incorrect descriptions that communists and socialists are “left wing”, and fascists and Nazis and white supremacists are “right wing”. Americans are often dismayed when they discover that what they’ve been told is truth by those they trusted is a deliberate semantic deception, and an outright LIE!
The most plausible (to me) explanation of how these terms came about goes back to just before the French Revolution in 1789. In the French Assembly, those who generally supported the Monarchy (king, queen, nobility, government bureaucrats) were said to stand or sit on the King’s right. Those who wanted to change French society by abolishing the Monarchy, including using violent means if necessary, stood or sat on the King’s left. “Rightists” were those who supported the government and all of its real or perceived injustices; “Leftists” were those who wanted to change French society as quickly as possible, using whatever means were required. The violent “leftists” eventually emerged victorious, until even stronger leftist demagogues introduced many of their former willing accomplices in violence to “Madame Guillotine”. Eventually an “opportunist” general, Napoleon Bonaparte, grabbed ALL the power and declared that he was now the “Emperor”, which is the fantasy of all present day leftist progressives, members of The New Bolshevik Party (formerly Democrats), and closet Marxists in the U.S. I’ve always subscribed to the “Political Spectrum” explanation of the late, great Robert Welch. Back in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, I first read his common sense explanation of the REAL differences between “left” and “right”. Those differences revolve around the amount of total POWER AND CONTROL exercised by the members of various forms of government. In terms we all can understand, when political power is increasingly controlled by the government, this must invariably result in the people having less and less power, and thereby less and less control over their own government and their own destinies. When government CONTROL AND POWER becomes ultimate, or TOTAL, and “people power” becomes essentially nil, then that is the definition of 100% left wing government, and those who subscribe to and support that form of government are rightly referred to as “left wingers” or “left wing extremists”.
On the same political spectrum, there obviously is a “right” side. So then, what is the OPPOSITE of TOTAL POWER AND CONTROL—i.e. total government? Wouldn’t the opposite be NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL? Seems to me it would. I believe that is called ANARCHY, or no government control, where “everyone does what seems right in his own eyes”, as God’s Word explained long ago. “Anarchy” means ‘rule by no one’, and is just as detrimental and hazardous to human liberty as is total government. In fact, in the long history of mankind, whenever ‘anarchy’ reigned for a time, ultimately it morphed into a tyranny or dictatorship or rule of “the strong man” over the weak. As the ancient Greeks wisely reminded us: Without law there can be NO freedom. But as history has also taught mankind, WITH TOO MUCH LAW FREEDOM CAN BE EQUALLY ENDANGERED!
We must always remember Lord Acton’s wisdom: “All power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That “Law of Suffering Mankind” has never been abrogated! Our Founders back in 1787 gave us the ancient Latin: Res Publica (the peoples’ thing); or as we call it today-- a Republic, governed by the longest lasting written Constitution known to man (which is what our U.S. Constitution is). A concerned woman asked Ben Franklin, at the conclusion of the Constitutional debates in Philadelphia, “What kind of government have you given us?” To which the senior statesman replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it!” In today’s America, it is becoming more and more “murky” whether or not Americans can keep their constitutional republic and, sadly, whether or not the majority of Americans even want to do so.
For many reasons, large percentages of our countrymen, particularly the “millennials” who have been either “mal” or “non” educated about American history and government, seem to have no strong dedication to the principles that identify our Constitutional Republican form of Federalism, and which have served us well since the time of our Founding Generation. Too many Americans of all ages accept the politically correct dogma that ever-growing government is good, and that efforts to curtail government services designed to “help people” should be looked upon with suspicion, especially if these attacks against big government are proposed by politicians and/or groups that are perceived to be “conservative”, which in today’s modern “mal-information” equates to “bad, greedy, uncaring, unsympathetic, militaristic, jingoistic, evil, and just plain wrong”!
So just “who” belongs where on the political spectrum? Imagine a straight line as the spectrum. There’s a left, a middle, and a right. On the FAR LEFT SIDE are communism, repressive socialism (which is incorporated into most leftist forms), Nazi-ism, Fascism, Extreme Nationalism (as in pre-WW11 Japan), and Total Power Monarchies (as in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Persia, Napoleonic France, or Saudi Arabia today). On the FAR RIGHT SIDE is anarchy, or rule by no one (except perhaps whoever has the “biggest sticks” and controls the biggest MOB). In the MIDDLE of the spectrum is US—people who live under a Constitutional Republic, where we elect people to represent us and look out for our interests and safeguard our liberties, and where WE, THE PEOPLE, can vote them out of office should they disappoint us. (I’m glad that I’m a ‘middle-of-the-roader!)
In addition, please realize that “White Supremacists” often masquerade
as members of patriotic or heritage organizations, but usually identify with the “Skinhead” movement, which is closely related to the Nazi (Fascist) philosophy of racial superiority. Despite their use of genuine symbols of patriotism and resistance against tyranny, such as the U.S. flag, the Gadsden Flag, and the Confederate Battle Flag (among other hi-jacked symbols used by the quite small White Supremacy movement), this is essentially a LEFT WING movement pretending to be what it is NOT. Violence is endemic among its public meetings and forums, sometimes perpetrated by its members, but often directed against it by rival or competing groups claiming to “resist” its’ message of racial superiority; groups like the totally violent FASCIST MOB known as “Antifa”, and similar law breaking hordes of leftist losers and malcontents—because violence in all of its manifestations is ALWAYS a mark of leftist movements and intimidating leftwing MOBS.
Next time we’ll look at these various forms of governmental philosophies in more detail, because there is much confusion in the minds of our American countrymen as to exactly WHAT form of government really exists today in the U.S. It may not be what you believe it to be.
