@Walter Hinteler,
Quote:The terms 'left' and 'right' come, as we know from school, from the seating arrangements in the parliament of the French July Monarchy.
This deserves to be expanded upon. In October, 1789, the market women in Paris marched to Versailles in what was obviously a spontaneous demonstration. Things got ugly a few times, and the Queen and her children were chased through the rooms, while one of the guards was attacked, murdered and the corpse mutilated. To calm the situation, La Fayette, who was then the commander of the National Guard, and Bailly, the mayor of Paris convinced them that they must come back to Paris.
Once there, they were installed in the Tuileries Palace. In the grounds was Le Manege, the old, indoor riding school. This was converted for the use of the National Assembly. There was already seating there, from the days when the riding instructors and the grooms would put on equestrian shows--we would call them "bleachers." The ground of the riding ring was paved over, and a floor put down, and then a raised dais was erected at the far end from the bleacher seats, and a table was placed there for the use of the President of the Assembly.
When anyone addressed the Assembly, he would go to stand next to the President's table. As he faced the Assembly, Mirabeau and the constitutional monarchists were on his right--they favored retaining the institution of the monarchy, around which would be erected a constitutional government. To his left were the republicans, usually referred to as the "Gironde" because their most brilliant speakers came from the southwest of France. In fact, from 1791 to 1793, the Girondists formed the government.
But most significant of all was La Montagne, the Mountain. The most radical, the most revolutionary (as we would say today, the far "left) were seated above and behind the constitutional monarchists and the republicans in the bleacher seats, and they were called "the Mountain," and the members there were known as Montagnards. This included people such as Maximilien Robespierre and Jean-Paul Marat. Robespierre was eventually to accomplish the destruction of the Girondists and their nascent republic, ordering the execution of their leaders. It was the Mountain, the most radical and revolutionary faction, lead by Robespierre, who created the Committee for Public Safety and carried out the mass executions which became known as the terror.
So from the first days of the use of the term, right meant conservative,
and the left were moderates, centrists--they were not the wild-eyed revolutionaries with a blood lust in their hearts.
Not that we can expect people like Okie and Ican with their partisan hysteria and massive self-delusion to understand distinctions such as that.
and the second, because it can't be said often enough.
