I loathe when American conservatives define themselves as “right wing” anything, even in jest — just as I loathe when the liberal press uses it as identification for American conservatives — because it is an inaccurate use of the term.

Via Wikipedia:

The terms Right and Left were coined during the French Revolution, referring to seating arrangements in parliament; those who sat on the right supported preserving the institutions of the Ancien Régime (the monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church). Use of the term “Right” became more prominent after the second restoration of the French monarchy in 1815 with the Ultra-royalists.

[...]

In the successive legislative assemblies, monarchists who supported the Ancien Régime were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side.

Ancien Régime is an ideology diametrically opposed to that of American conservatism, which advocates for the bare minimum of authority. The terms are also used to describe a split in modern-day leftist (by the correct definition, “far right”) ideologies in WWI Italy.

A key element in the creation of fascism was the fusion of agendas of nationalists on the political right with Sorelian syndicalists on the left, around the outbreak of World War I.[19]

[...]

Nationalist and militarist influences that had begun to combine with syndicalism since 1907 created a split in the political left.[19] This split was strong in Italy, where nationalists and syndicalists increasingly influenced each other.[19] Maurassian nationalism, close to Sorelism, influenced radical Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini.[56] Corradini spoke of the need for a nationalist-syndicalist movement, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to fight.[56] Corradini spoke of Italy as being a “proletarian nation” that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the “plutocratic” French and British.[57] Corradini’s views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy’s economic backwardness was caused by corruption within its political class, liberalism, and division caused by “ignoble socialism”.

The Italian Nationalist Association?

Corradini occasionally used the term “national socialism” to define the ideology which he endorsed. Though this is the same term used by the movement of National Socialism in Germany (a.k.a.Nazism) no evidence exists to indicate that Corradini’s use of the term had any influence.[4]

In 1914, the ANI began to tilt towards authoritarian nationalism with its endorsement of the creation of an authoritarian corporate state, a radical idea created by Italian law professor, Alfredo Rocco.[3] Such a corporate state led by a corporate assembly rather than a parliament, which would be composed of unions, business organizations and other economic organizations that would work within a powerful state government to regulate business-labour relations, organize the economy, end class conflict, and make Italy an industrial state which could compete with imperial powers and establish its own empire.[3]

In this instance, “left wing” and “right wing” was used to describe a fracture on one side only. No where in political history is “right wing” used to describe the ideology of limited government except during recent times by the left to discredit American conservatism — and many American conservatives allow such an uneducated misuse.

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h/t Smitty in email for this link to Ordered Liberty, which points to some truly disordered nonsense from Jennifer “Let’s Pretend I’m Conservative” Rubin at the Washington Post today. Having awoken in a generous mood this morning, I’m hesitant to conclude Rubin’s a complete buffoon. But as the screen-cap below indicates, she doesn’t exactly make that easy to do.

Click the image to enlarge, if you wish. Note the url displayed at bottom in Google Chrome, revealing the actual link she refers people to, while suggesting it’s a Peter Berkowitz essay in support of her silly, if  supercilious, non-argument against Santorum’s understanding of America: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/royal-wedding-watch/post/kate-and-wills-wedding-program-available-for-download/2011/04/28/AFQyp14E_blog.html.

Fortunately, the link is dead, now, by the way. But let’s do hope she saved it for posterity’s sake on her hard drive (eye-roll). Unfortunately, it seems poor Jennifer thought she was reading something informative for Conservatives but was apparently only indulging her fascination with monarchy, like the more-or-less Liberal with a DOD chip on her shoulder she is, actually. But, to return to being generous, let’s put that aside, take on her insufferable blathering on its lack of merit, and assume she’s not genuinely a complete moron, as I said above.

Now, Rubin’s been going down the list attacking this, or that, potential 2012 GOP nominee, presumably until she’s done and decides to tell us just how wonderful and astute a conservative is a Romney, or a Pawlenty, or whichever establishment Republican she envisions as the GOP’s new Prince William.

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The American Public has come to know firebrand Reverend Al Sharpton as the #1Black Leader in the media.

Sharpton has billed himself as the voice of fairness, balance and authority, when it comes to the issues racial injustice in the Black Community, while boasting he is unafraid to debate anyone about the merits, yet unknown to many Al Sharpton is actually afraid to debate one man and that man happens to be Project21’s Chairman Mychal Massie.

Massie has put out several calls and letters to debate Sharpton on the issues of race relations, big activist government and the tea party movement, yet Sharpton and a whole host of other self-appointed Black Leaders are either unwilling or unable to debate the issues, yet they are willing to hide behind members of the press, who will allow them to filibuster and control as well as edit the segments in their favor.

I believe like many in the media Sharpton is simply afraid he would be unable to think on his feet and present his arguments logically against an Intelligent Conservative of Color, thus he would rather pretend that Massie does not exist.

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Since President Obama’s elevation to Intergalactic Superstar Caesar in   November 2008, the media has been busy writing obituaries for the GOP. Most of these unwelcome mourners have offered nuggets of advice along the lines of, “Why don’t you try being more, you know, like us? More—what’s the term? Oh yes, more moderate. Conservatism is so last season.” The day after Obama’s  election, the Huffington Post gleefully announced “GOP Civil War Begins[!!!!!!]”

Being the tenderhearted folks they are, the liberal MSM diagnosed the real problem for us: “[I]f there’s a real crisis in the House right now for the Republican Party, it’s the gradually diminishing voice of moderation.” Over a year later, MSNBC was still going strong with the GOP civil war theme, warning that an ideological purity test “threatens to derail moderate Republican candidacies in heated 2010 Republican primaries already underway.”

Obviously, there have been and are ongoing arguments about the direction of conservatism and the Republican party. The 2008 election would’ve shaken the confidence of Alexander the Great, had he been a political candidate instead of a slaughtering conqueror. But the media is missing the real story again. The story now isn’t the demise of the GOP moderate. It’s the sudden downfall of last season’s debutante, the “moderate Democrat.” (more…)

Chuck Johnson is at it again. He must be out on a weekend pass. I feel compelled to answer the Little Green Monster after I saw him go after James O’Keefe with that same tired wet noodle of a charge he has leveled at so many, calling him a white nationalist. Johnson claimed in an LGF post that “ACORN sting filmmaker James O’Keefe was photographed attending a 2006 white nationalist conference titled ‘Race and Conservatism.’”

Sounds terrible, right? Sure, until you get the facts that Johnson doesn’t tell you. When it became clear that it wasn’t a “white nationalist conference,” Johnson tried to slither out of responsibility for his words by saying in a new post: “It’s very clear that I attributed the ‘white nationalist conference’ claim to One People’s Project; that’s what the words ‘according to’ mean.”

Busted! As if it weren’t obvious that in his original post, he was approving of and endorsing what One People’s Project said. But this is typical of Johnson’s weaselly hit-and-run smear tactics.

Meanwhile, Larry O’Connor at Big Journalism uncovered the truth about O’Keefe’s supposed participation in this conference: (more…)