Edward Norden
2009-06-13 13:17:12
Fascinating discussion. But why hasn’t anybody mentioned the origin of “left” and “right”? Marie Claude will confirm that the terms originate in the Assemblee Nationale during French revolutionary times, when the bloodiest-minded Jacobins sat on the far left and the monarchist diehards on the far right of a circular arrangement which almost met in front of the podium. In other words, there was but a small gap between the extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. Thus it has ever been. See the many Communists who became Nazis, and then reverted the other way in East Germany. And the one point on which fascists and Marxists can always agree? “Down with the Jews.”
