Posted on 01/31/2005 3:31:18 PM PST by quidnunc
Everybody loves Viktor Yushchenko, and why not? The plucky populist stared down Ukraine's corrupt oligarchs to become his country's president, surviving an attack on his life in the process. Even members of the establishment media love him. You can tell because they call him what is, to them, the highest compliment in the English language — a liberal.
"Liberal Leader From Ukraine Was Poisoned," reads a page one, December headline in the New York Times. Most every major media outlet has described Yushchenko similarly.
But Yushchenko is no liberal in the modern American sense of the word. He supports free markets, NATO membership for Ukraine, and a closer relationship with the U.S. — staples of the American Right's agenda for Europe, and exactly the kinds of policies that drive the American and European Left crazy.
By extension, the media widely depicted the other Viktor Y — former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, a thug who ham-handedly tried to steal the election — as the "conservative" in the race. Never mind that Yanukovych is a former Communist Party member who ran on an explicitly anti-Western platform, advocating closer ties with the Kremlin. He disdains capitalism and free trade, and throughout the campaign accused Yushchenko of being a running-dog lackey of the Yankee imperialists.
If Yanukovych is conservative, then so is the Berkeley Sociology Department.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at taemag.com ...
I've said that many a time - the liberals distort the conservative tag when they talk about former communists as an attempt to pin associations with communist totalitarianism on the right instead of on the left where it properly belongs.
This is so true. I've also wondered why the Nazis and fascists of the 30s and 40s are considered right-wingers today. They would have considered themselves "progressive thinkers".
modern liberals have hijacked the "liberal" label to lend credibility to their movement. classic liberals are having conniptions at trying to find their place in a world gone mad with labeling.
American conservatives are the classic liberals of yesteryear.
At least they've labelled themselves so that we can use it against them. The best I've ever seen was in Florida--Connie Mack v. Buddy MacKay for U.S. Senate. Mack's slogan?
"Hey Buddy--You're Liberal."
What got me, sir, was during the collapse of the Soviet Union in August 1991--the Communist totalitarians who tried to oust Gorbachev were universally described by the news media as "right-wing," while Yeltsin and his supporters were described as "left-wing."
There are many who need to go back to school, to take Political Science 101, which describes the two wings.
Her politics supposedly mirror her husbands, if he was in the US, they'd be called right wingers.
The media has no clue and is just lazy, even alot of the DUmmies were upset seeing Viktor Yushchenko win.
Wrong. Foolish conservatives applied the liberal label to leftists as an insult back in the day (decades ago). Now we've lost one of the best words to describe our economic policy (especially how central liberty is to it).
Stupid American conservatives turned the word "liberal" into an insult meaning "libertine." It's our fault, not the leftists'.
Excellent analysis. This article should be forwarded to every major news outlet out there. I think the reaction would be rather interesting.
They hit the nail right on with this one. Liberal=Good, Conservative=Bad. Of course, if Yuschenko proves himself to be a friend to the U.S., it's anyone's guess how long he'll merit the "Good Liberal" classification.
Here's a "right wing" European fascist -
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” - Adolph Hitler, speech of May 1, 1927
Well, they seem to have accepted the label and they're running with it.
Not entirely. Some certainly are. But others are religious. The damnable thing about Revolution and 'enlightenment' is that it wishes to find the truth and purpose of life in man alone, in materialism or occultism even, but not in Catholicism, or broadly Judeo-Christianity. Yet this shaped western culture so that even on the depraved trailing edge, today, many assumptions are made from a floor created by Christendom. Our 'liberal' founders were some of them insane Protestant cultists. One of the Adams Presidents was almost an embarrassment, or is seen so today, for the vitriol of his writing. But that sectarian contempt was shared by many. Yet it was for the glimmer, still, of Christendom in this masonic and 'enlightened' experiment that the people were encouraged even by their leaders, in speech after speech, to preserve their Judeo-Christian faiths. It's the one thing that still holds it all together in the face of militant Revolution in the ACLU and other Communist organizations, in the face of 'new age' and masonic paganism and materialism, and just otherwise dispirited heathen and oriental bureacracy, which is always a blessing and curse, depending on how the bureacrats are managed. Not all conservatives are that sort of liberal. Many are traditionalists. Many of the principal voices are traditionalist Catholics, in fact, Latin Mass Catholics, like Bill Buckley, Paul Weyrich, Brent Bozell, and so on. I'd mention Pat Buchanan, but I find myself tending to disagree with him, now, on practically everything.
The Nazis are only considered 'right-wingers' by left-wingers. They conveniently forget that the term 'Nazi' actually stood for "the National Socialist Party"
bookmarked, unde bias.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.