Posted on 07/09/2010 10:38:38 PM PDT by dr_who
Ever since rival factions arranged themselves on opposite sides of a meeting hall during the French Revolution, the political meanings of the terms "left" and "right" have been pretty constant. Left-wingers everywhere like high taxes, big government, and social change. Right-wingers prefer low taxes, small government, and free markets.
Except when they don't.
Margit Tavits of Washington University and Natalia Letki of the University of Warsaw studied political parties in post-communist Eastern Europe for a recent article in the American Political Science Review and discovered a peculiar reversal. They argue that, across 13 of these countries, leftists have gone right, establishing their democratic and capitalist bona fides by pursuing pro-market policies, while right-wing parties have done the opposite, bulking up spending to win over swing voters.
For instance, Hungary's first post-communist government increased government spending. It fell to the Socialists to implement austerity measures and revive the country's economy in the early 1990s. In Poland, Social Democrats were firm supporters of controversial "shock therapy" privatization policies that fast-tracked economic liberalization. In both cases, voters didn't seem to feel betrayed by the change in direction, reelecting the flip-flopping parties multiple times over the following years.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
I could fix that with a pix, eh?
We're good, right?
Was the NSDAP even considered “right” in 1933?
I THINK that the habit of characterising the nazis as far right came a bit later, and had a lot to do with the war and related soviet propaganda.
To many observers, no. I am not trying to play William Shirer, just to say, the fall of the Weimar Republic was complex, and that left/right distinctions are inevitably circumscribed.
It has its uses, to a point
I see your wager and raise you a Canadian pound:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cristina_Kirchner_and_Canada_PM_Stephen_Harper.jpg
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