Quote:
Originally posted by Kaz:
Good one! *applauds*
Now, can someone define "left wing" and "right wing"? I think there's a bit of confusion here - or maybe I'm the one confused.
Wait a sec, dinner! Be back in bout half an hour or so.
|
You can look at it in terms of state owned vs. privately owned - state being left (taken to its extreme, that's communism vs. capitalism, but that is taking it to the extreme... You get left wing and right wing within capitalism.) Left wing is more in favour of services being government run/regulated, (essential services, anyway) where as right wing would have them run as privately owned enterprise to make profit (well, profit in theory. Who profits is debatable. Oops, may just have betrayed my own bias there....
Another way of looking at it is: right wing - radical and reactionary, conservative, traditional. Left wing - advocating liberal reform and change, potentially revolutionary (that's more the far left), often leaning towards favouring government intervention to accomplish aims.
Ugh. That's not that clear. Oh well, someone else will probably explain it better. Got the below off the net. Gives a bit of history and clarifies it a bit.
'Among the most ill-defined phrases in English are the phrases "right wing" and
"left wing", in reference to political philosophy. The origin derives from the British parliament building. If you stand in front of the British parliament building, facing the door, the House of Commons is to your left, and the House of Lords is to your right.
When they built the U. S. Congress building, they put the House of Representatives, the lower house, to the left, and the Senate, the upper house, to the right. Therefore, in the 19th Century, left-wing came to mean poor, and right-wing came to mean rich. Then the phrases left-wing and right-wing came to refer to the sort of legislation or rhetoric that would be going on in that side of the building. For instance, in the left wing of the British
parliament building, the House of Commons, people would be pushing to increase the percentage of the population that could vote, and other reforms. In the right wing of the parliament building, the House of Lords, people were pushing to prevent reforms, and maintain the status quo. Thus left-wing came to mean wanting change, and right-wing came to mean not wanting change.
This is the main definition used today. The more left wing you are, the more change you want. The more right wing you are, the less change you want. Of course, the extreme right wing is reactionary and wants to go back to the way things were in the past, which itself is change. Therefore both the left wing and the extreme right wing want change, but they want very different kinds of change. Once you get into differentiating between different kinds of change, it becomes extremely complicated. You could say that the left wing wants change and to progress, and the extreme right wing wants change and to regress. However, the extreme right wing doesn't consider it regression. Suffice it to say that basically, the left wing wants change and the right wing
doesn't want change.
(I would say the above was written by a left winger...
)
------------------
Ascended Mistress of Illumination OR Paws R Us