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To: CatoRenasci
Le Pen isn't "right" He's merely a nationalist, but so were and are many on the Left (e.g. Castro, Chavez, Ho Chi Min, Mao.)

Liberals like to call anyone they dislike "right", facts notwithstanding. Basically, US liberals represent cosmopolitan Left, whereas Le Pen represents nationalistic Left. Many Le Pen associates are former Communists, e.g. that guy who distributed pork-based charity soup in heavily Muslim neighborhoods.

36 posted on 02/19/2006 4:14:12 AM PST by Feldkurat_Katz (What no women’s magazine ever offers to improve is women’s minds - Taki)
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To: Feldkurat_Katz
You can't look at notions of left and right in Europe and America the same way, although the American left is looking more and more like the European left.

The "right" in Europe began, and remains for the most part to this day, in opposition to increasing liberty and the destruction of monarchism, even absolutism. After the American Revolution, that sort of "right" either left for Canada, England or the other colonies, or accomodated itself to the republican and classical liberal principles undergirding American independence. The closest thing to American mainstream conservatism historically is probably the 18th and early 19th century English Whig party.

The European equivalents of our right are actually mostly small parties like the German 1Freie Demokraten ("Free Democrats").

We do have very small elements of the European ultra-right, for example Buchanan and his ilk, and a sprinkling of neo-Nazi nutters. The nutters have never had much of a following (the 1920's Ku Klux Klan was primarily populist and Southern Democrat), but Buchanan and his ilk deserve some comment.

Pat Buchanan is probably the closest thing to a European (especially French) ultramontagne catholic conservative who is active in American public life. His authoritarian impulses are strong and his anti-semitism is increasingly poorly disguised. The amazing thing is that he lasted as long as he did in mainstream conservatism.

37 posted on 02/19/2006 5:35:35 AM PST by CatoRenasci (Ceterum Censeo Arabiam Esse Delendam -- Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit)
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