Well I won’t leave you guessing. The terms “left” and “right” came into use to define political leanings duirng the French Revolution. Those who sat on the left side of the Parliament wanted complete change of government and society, those who sat on the right wanted to preserve traditional society. Beside where they sat, the “rightists” were immediately identifiable by their lack of heads.
Funny, the French, not the American, Revolution is considered in most of the rest of the world to be the watershed event in moving from autocratic to democratic rule. But as I always say, the French fought a revolution to get rid of a king and replace him with an emperor.
Leo Cecchini
June 2009
Comments are closed or deactivated
I’ve always wondered what French aristocrats were thinking when they took up the American cause with such enthusiasm. Was it just a reaction against the English, royalist solidarity and their own futures be damned? Or were they so (naively) secure in their own positions that they never dreamed such a thing could happen in France? They were helping the Americans in an anti-aristocratic impulse that should have been anathema to them. Always been a mystery to me.