Author Norman Berdichevsky
The Left is Seldom Right
The terms LEFT and RIGHT are so taken for granted in any discourse on political affairs that Dr. Berdichevsky’s remarkable book appears as a welcome antidote to get us off the habit. It is a novel, insightful and well written treatise that should be required reading in any 101 course on political science and international affairs.
The twenty five case studies cover a varied range of both American and international affairs and history that reveal how often the political extremes on both the Right and Left have found a common front that …..’Glorify and deify abstractions such as The Nation, The Working Class, The Party, The Race, The King, The Leader, The Church and worst of all, The People’
The book also contains an engaging personal note on how the author matured from ‘radical’ and impressionable teenager, captivated by the language of the Left, convinced that it is always right, to the mature student of human nature and fallibility that is apparent in his judgment today.
This is indeed a book that suits the times with the approaching American presidential election of 2012 in which a large segment of the public may be expected to follow the same trajectory of political thinking by rejecting the ‘glamour appeals’ of the Left with its penchant for identifying itself with so called ‘progressive’ policies.
A large element in the book deals with how popular culture, particularly the cinema, has molded opinion in identifying its heroes with a false image of THE LEFT and why Hollywood has never dealt honestly with either the crimes of Stalinism and the gulags, Pol Pot, Castro, Arafat, or the principled resistance in World War II to the Nazis on the part of conservative, Christian, monarchist, nationalist and authoritarian parties and leaders (see the chapters on King Boris III of Bulgaria, Arne Sorensen and Dansk Samling, Greek leader Iannos Metaxas, the Austrian nationalist leaders Dollfuss and von Schusschnig; or the courageous women who initially were heroines on the Left but thought ‘outside the box’ and became vilified by The Left – Undset, Fallaci and Rahola.
Also fascinating are the chapters on how many ‘Liberals’ supported ostensibly progressive measures for groups such as ‘affirmative action’ and ‘multi-culturalism’ that have since become the denial of individual rights on which our constitution is based.
The Left is Seldom Right is a book that lives up to the claim that we should be much more aware and concerned with the right and the wrong of political issues rather than the Right and Left terminology we so frequently lean on as a crutch.
Author Norman Berdichevsky
The Left is Seldom Right
The terms LEFT and RIGHT are so taken for granted in any discourse on political affairs that Dr. Berdichevsky’s remarkable book appears as a welcome antidote to get us off the habit. It is a novel, insightful and well written treatise that should be required reading in any 101 course on political science and international affairs.
The twenty five case studies cover a varied range of both American and international affairs and history that reveal how often the political extremes on both the Right and Left have found a common front that …..’Glorify and deify abstractions such as The Nation, The Working Class, The Party, The Race, The King, The Leader, The Church and worst of all, The People’
