Changes

==Origin==

==Origin==

The left-right classification originally came from the [[National Assembly]] in [[France]] just before the [[French Revolution]]. Members who supported political rights for all classes of society, would sit on the left side of the assembly hall in which they met.  Members who supported the monarchy, would sit towards the right. Those who had been offended by their own party would frequently stand up and walk over to the other side of the hall in order to make a political statement.  The leftist [[Reign of Terror]] during the early [[Enlightenment]] reached its peak in the years 1793 and 1794.  The left attempted a dechristianization movement to replace the "reactionary" worship of God and replace it with the worship of national patriotism, or the ''Patrie''.  Many churches were closed and converted into Temples of Reason. <ref>John Hall Stewart, ''A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution'' (Macmillan, New York, 1963). </ref>

The left-right classification originally came from the [[National Assembly]] in [[France]] just before the [[French Revolution]]. Members who supported political rights for all classes of society, would sit on the left side of the assembly hall in which they met.  Members who supported the monarchy, would sit towards the right. Those who had been offended by their own party would frequently stand up and walk over to the other side of the hall in order to make a political statement.  Historian [[Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.]] has said the spectrum theory was "adequate to the political simplicities of the nineteenth century, when the Right meant those who wished to preserve the existing order and the Left meant those who wished to change it. But the twentieth century, here as elsewhere, introduced new ambiguities." <ref>[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/schlesinger-notrightleft.html Not Right, Not Left, But a Vital Center], [[Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.]], ''New York Times Magazine'', April 4, 1948.</ref>

 

Historian [[Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.]] has said the spectrum theory was "adequate to the political simplicities of the nineteenth century, when the Right meant those who wished to preserve the existing order and the Left meant those who wished to change it. But the twentieth century, here as elsewhere, introduced new ambiguities." <ref>[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/schlesinger-notrightleft.html Not Right, Not Left, But a Vital Center], [[Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.]], ''New York Times Magazine'', April 4, 1948.</ref>

==Definitions==

==Definitions==