Welcome to the arena

Here you will find my opinions about the application of political principles to the news of the day. My perspective is clearly from the conservative point of view. This is a place to express my concerns, passions, irritations, and commentary as they apply to the current political issues of the day. Political is defined loosely in this blog. There may be posts that are not strictly political, such as movie reviews, medical topics, religious commentary and thoughts on history. I hope interest will be generated by blending my thoughts with current events. I anticipate that there will be honest disagreement. I encourage feedback to my posts with the goal of achieving clarity of disagreement. I will strive to keep the conversation polite and respectful, while avoiding political correctness and maintaining tension to keep things exciting. Hopefully, friends and family will enjoy frequenting the arena for a little intellectual stimulation and good ol' fashioned debate.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Where did "left-wing" and "right-wing" come from?

As I was setting up this blog, I began thinking about the definition of politically "left" and "right". Where did this terminology originate? I found out it started in France; specifically 1791 in the assembly. The term was applied to where each political group sat in the assembly. The meaning of the terms have evolved over time. The Wikipedia has a great entry on the history of the terms left and right. You can read it here.

I anticipate this blog will use the terms as they are currently understood from an American point of view. There are two main parties in the US. The Democrats are considered the left, the Republicans are considered the right. However, the term is always imprecise. A closer alignment of terms is probably liberal for the left and conservative for the right. I have noticed that the term "progressive" is now favored by some instead of "liberal". This is most likely due to the fact that the term liberal has been used frequently as a pejorative term, so much so that liberals often don't like to identify themselves with the label.

I identify myself as a "conservative". Ronald Reagan is the most recent politician that I generally align myself with. I believe there are liberal and conservative Republicans and liberal and conservative Democrats. I think the labels serve a useful purpose, but suffer from the fact that they mean different things to different people. They also imply a fallacy of dichotomy. I like to envision a person's political beliefs on a spectrum from liberal to conservative, or left to right. The definition relies on one's point of reference. Depending on your political beliefs, a politician who seems conservative to you may be viewed as liberal by someone else. For example, I consider John McCain to be more of a liberal Republican, except on military matters. I'm sure many of you consider him to be conservative or right-wing.

I plan on defining what conservative means to me in future entries. I'm sure Kenny would like to make his own definitions as well.

Dave
Posted by D. Hall at 10/26/2008

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