Renaming the terms

This blog was started from the article "Reclaiming the Terms" that I wrote and ever since keep shoving into people's faces.  In my article I insist that true Liberals are found on the Right of the political spectrum.  But it turns out that sometimes you have to go even further.  So, at the risk of flattering Bookworm again, I am presenting here another of her brilliant articles, in which she renames the illiberal Left into Statists and liberal Right into Individualists:

Renaming the paradigm *UPDATED*

Bookworm on May 13 2008 at 9:07 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized

I’ve decided it’s time to jettison entirely the words “Left” and “Right” when used with reference to political ideologies. I came to this conclusion after a very interesting discussion with my mother. While we were talking about the military Junta in Burma, she let drop the fact that she believes that all tyrannies come from the political Right.

I was taken aback, especially when my mother explained to me that the Soviets, Nazis and Italian Fascists were all tyrannies from the Right. I could understand her confusion about the Nazis and the Italian Fascists — after all, Jonah Goldberg wrote a whole book trying to educate people out of their confusion on this subject — but her statement about the Soviets perplexed me.

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Conservatives want to contract the power of the Federal government, not expand it, because they have recognized that tyrannies, regardless of the political ideology that powers them, are Statist. Republicans, I said, are Individualists. Given the opportunity to shape this country’s politics, they are the ones who are least likely ones to lead America into the tyrannical, militaristic regime she fears.

It was quite an amazing conversation because, by the end, she really grasped the difference between Left and Right. Right is not Nazis and Fascists and failed Communist states. In America, Right is about individual rights, and Left is about Statism — and it is Statism that, when it runs amok, is dangerous.

Anyway, because of the fact that this type of confusion has poisoned the meaning of these commonly used political terms, I think it’s more accurate to describe the two American ideologies as Statist and Individualist — and I know on which side of the political aisle I want to reside.

As before, excerpts don't do justice to Bookworm's article, so read the whole thing.  And, as Bookworm, I know exactly on which side of the political aisle I am - on the side of individual liberty.

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