The term Leftist refers to someone on the 'left' side of the political spectrum who generally supports varying degrees of social, political, or economic change designed to promote the public welfare, variously in the guises of social democracy, liberalism, or the several strains of socialism and communism. It may also be applied to those who oppose conservative politics.
The word 'liberal' is often used in the US to mean 'leftist'. But this is inconsistent with the original meaning of the word liberal.
During the Reign of Terror of the early Enlightenment, 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. [1]
Michael Bakunin critiqued prominent leftist theoritician Karl Marx in 1873 with these words,
- "..if the proletariat is to be the ruling class, over whom is it to rule? ...the peasant "rabble" who, as it is known, does not enjoy the sympathy of the Marxists who consider it to represent a lower level of culture, will probably be ruled by the factory proletariat of the cities. Or, if this problem is to be approached nationalistically, the Slavs will be placed in the same subordinate relationship to the victorious German proletariat in which the latter now stands to the German bourgeoisie." [2]
Modern leftists
Modern leftists in the United States have come under increasing criticism as advocates of thought control. [3] Author David Limbaugh cites, "Consider the subjects of evolution, global warming, special rights for homosexuals and abstinence education. Consider efforts of the left to silence conservative talk radio. Consider the mainstream media's arrogant denial of its transparent liberal bias, pronouncing itself to be above politics and inherently objective and its critics somehow skewed....Consider the leftist refrain that red state conservatives do not merely possess a different world view, but are not part of the "reality-based community."" However, leftists deny being a part of thought control and manipulating the media. Some even charge the right with this behavior.
References
- ↑ John Hall Stewart, A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution (Macmillan, New York, 1963).
- ↑ Michael Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, (1873), in Sam Dolgoff, Bakunin On Anarchy, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1972), p. 330.
- ↑ Leftist Thought Control, David Limbaugh, Human Events, 05/04/2007.
External links
- V. I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism, An Infantile Disorder (1920) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, English edition, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1952, Vol. II, Part 2.