> I’m sorry for you to find out this way, but to be anti-monarchist is to be on the Left, by definition. <
I’m scratching my head a little on that one. Our Founders (Washington, Jefferson, etc.) were certainly anti-monarchist. They booted King George III, and they did not replace him with our own monarchy.
Yet our Founders were not leftists.
They were, however, liberals. I hate that the leftists stole the term liberal from those of us who value Liberty.
The United States had its beginnings as a reformation project, whose intellectual and religious ancestors murdered their king. Especially in New England, with the Puritans. Washington was just a Freemason, and if you know anything about history, you will know how deeply involved freemasonry was in the French revolution. Liberalism is in America’s DNA. Most FReepers who consider themselves conservative have a political philosophy that corresponds well with classical liberalism.
For my part, a return to monarchy is hardly the order of the day, but singing La Marseilles, that's something else--a sort of Sieg Heil!
In the name of revolution, they leveled and wasted the churches of France.
They were, by the standards of the day. Before the fact really, as, as stated above, the whole idea of political alignment on the basis of philosophical outlook wasnt invented until 1790.
Popular politics had just been born, as had political ideology. The US was way ahead of the curve, and thus radical, and “leftist”.
The economic class conflict thing developed later, notably in England.
Our founders were aligned with the Rockingham Whigs — the Burkean Whigs
predating Fox. Against Arbitrary Power (against the King’s faction power. )
Hence the Blue and Buff colors of Washington’s uniforms: Whig colors.