Michael Lumish
The shifting meaning of words is key to understanding political sensibilities.
In this piece, written for
Karen Lehrman Bloch
's White Rose Magazine, Jason Paluch outlines the essential differences between "Liberalism" and "Leftism."This is something that has stuck in my craw for years.
Liberalism is about the political tradition, grounded in the European Enlightenment, that values the freedom of the individual and that probably reached its height with Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Paluch concludes:
"Liberals adhere to the idea that people have a right to freely live their lives in any way they see fit as long as their choices and actions do not prevent others from doing the same. Leftists believe they have a right to dictate to others how they must live and what they should believe. The difference could not be more clear."
