THE basic division of modern politics since the French Revolution has been between the left and the right, reflecting the respective sides of the French National Assembly, where revolutionaries congregated to the left and royalists gathered to the right. The terms have persisted because they capture two basic and opposite worldviews. The left is characterized by a preference for change and reform, a commitment to liberty and equality, an orientation toward progress and the future, while the right is the party of order and tradition, hierarchy, and a disposition to valorize the past.
