Left…Right

I wonder how different our elections – and our governments – might be if we abandoned the metaphors Left and Right.  In English, as in French and Latin, right  is seen as good (right, droit, dexter), left as somehow inferior (left, gauche, sinister)

Why should these labels, left and right,  be used in politics in Aotearoa in the 21st Century?  (according to Wikipedia they were first used during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president’s right and supporters of the revolution to his left, and certainly they have been borrowed from England’s Parliament ‘s too.)

How can the Left ever be right? Or the Right ever be wrong?

Why don’t we use more accurate descriptions of the clusters of values exemplified by party groupings, or stop trying to force them into camps at all?

We hope there’ll soon be a  flowering of creativity from young people who find old-style political organization and discourse boring, sexist, racist, aggressive and often thoroughly silly…