Front Page Magazine recently talked with Norman Berdichevsky about his new book – with the great title – “The Left is Seldom Right.” His personal journey from left to right is reminiscent of David Horowitz’s (Front Page editor) own, as he detailed in “Left Illusions.” Although Horowitz’s “conversion” was triggered by the tragic murder of his bookkeeper, and Berdichevsky’s was more of a gradual “evolution,” both men had the courage to challenge the premises of their own world views.
 
Berdichevsky, who says he grew up in an ultra liberal environment with the misguided assumption that the “left is always right,” gradually came to realize that the left is rarely right.

As I grew older, I discovered that many of my assumptions that I received as “conventional wisdom” in the area of politics from my family, neighbors, and friends in the Bronx proved to be faulty, misleading or wrong. This discovery was further illuminated by my experiences in doing research at graduate school and many years residence abroad in Israel, Denmark, Spain and the U.K.

 
The central themes of his book are:

• This current worldview inherited from so many of our intellectuals and reinforced by many pundits and political commentators in the media reinforces an erroneous analysis of political events and personalities.
 
• It is primarily the political Left that has a vested interest in the continued use of this Left-Right terminology owing to their assumptions that all other cultures are somehow more authentic, holistic, integral and devoted to a sense of solidarity and community. They portray the United States as the epitome of alienation, greed, hypocrisy and crass materialism and therefore somehow deserving of constant condemnation.
 
• Anti-Semitism was not inherently part of many nationalist or “rightwing” movements… it is generated today overwhelmingly from the Far Left under the encouragement of the wealth and power of a militant Islam.

 
It wouldn’t be so bad, if the Left merely existed in a vacuum, but they insist on inflicting their warped “reality” on the rest of us, and now…

…Under the mantra of diversity, our laws and operating procedures in government, private organizations and universities ignore constitutional guarantees and have created a patchwork of ‘commitments’ to reward groups. Our national mottoes of E Pluribus Unum and In God We Trust are both wholly out of date.

Lefties delude themselves into thinking that they’re so very superior to us rubes in the bourgeois. Witness the arrogant tone in some of the questions posed during Wednesday night’s GOP debate. [And the Prius owner I saw yesterday whose vanity plate, quite honestly, described her as “SMUG.”] Thus, they can never follow the facts of any issue to a logical conclusion, because they’d either be shunned by their fellow elitists – or their heads would explode. As a defense mechanism, the Left, as Berdichevsky puts it –

…has evolved to the point that it can perform the most absurd mental gymnastics necessary to accommodate support for tyrannical leaders, religious fanatics such as the ayatollahs in Iran, Hezbollah (The Party of God​) thugs on the order of Hugo Chavez, organizations and movements throughout the “third world” who, without a blush, claim to represent the demand for rights and justice for women, children, ethnic and racial minorities, gays, and the institution of “social justice” yet are in reality light years behind the United States in all of these areas.

 
As I mentioned, it takes a lot of personal honesty and courage to reevaluate your own long-held world view, measure it against reality, and break free from the Leftist mindset. People like Horowitz and Berdichevsky risk losing family, friends, status and even income, by moving to the right. But once they make the transition, they find peace of mind, truth that corresponds to reality, and the confidence that comes with knowing they’re RIGHT.
 

 
OK, thanks for reading. Time for your pop quiz:
True or false? Many liberal ideas are recycled failures that backfire and can’t get simple concepts straight.
 
Get the answer to this, and other questions, by clicking on the image below and participating in a short survey by the Heritage Foundation. And help educate the Left with the Right answers: