Until being critiqued recently by a reader for my "Leftist agenda," I'd never seriously researched the phrase to see what it is that I'm supposed to be advocating.

What does it mean to have a "leftist agenda?"

In ordinary usage, the words "left" and "right" are roughly equivalent to "liberal" and "conservative," i.e. "Democrat" and "Republican."

The contemporary Left in the United States is usually understood to imply a commitment to government regulation of business, commerce, and industry; protection of fundamental rights -- especially freedom of speech and separation of church and state; and government intervention on behalf of racial, ethnic and sexual minorities and the poor.

Do I support those issues?

It seems to me historically when big business is left unchecked, massive abuses occur. See today's headlines for handy examples.

It is in resistance to these abuses throughout U.S. history that we have workers' safety rights, mandatory minimum wage laws, minimum age work laws and other laws in place to protect working people.

I support the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech and separation of church and state. I trust the wisdom of its authors.

I believe it is the duty of the government to protect the downtrodden, whether because of race, gender, sexual orientation or how far you fall below the poverty line.

If we fail to help those disenfranchised or less fortunate than ourselves, then we have failed, at least from a Left-leaning point of view.

The contemporary American Right is broadly defined by upholding a traditionalist understanding of constitutional law, protection of fundamental rights, opposition to governmental regulation of the economy and income redistribution, immigration control, and opposition to "reverse discrimination."

So here's where my "leftist agenda" label starts to fall apart.

I think support of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution ("protection of fundamental rights") is a basic American position, neither Right nor Left, and is completely compatible with a "traditionalist understanding of constitutional law."

It is true the Right and Left tend to pick and choose which Amendments to support.

The Right-leaner often stresses supporting the Second Amendment, which says "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Despite my Lefty ways, I have always been suspicious of arguments against the right of a person to own a gun.

The critics often argue that Amendment describes protected "group activity," i.e., the right of militias to exist, but not the right of an individual to go to Wal-Mart and buy a .22 rifle to shoot at tin cans in the back pasture on Saturday afternoons.

All the other Amendments describe protected individual rights, and I think the Second Amendment does too.

The Right is supposedly opposed to governmental regulation of the economy and income redistribution; however, the administration just "nationalized" a handful of the country's biggest major financial institutions to forestall economic disaster, a rather Leftist move on their part.

Immigration control? We're a melting pot. It's our branding statement. Either it's true or we shouldn't claim it.

And anyway, most "immigration control" takes the form of un-thought-out arguments against "them" stealing "our jobs" and arguments about how high to build the wall between here and Mexico.

There's a difference between immigration control and xenophobia.

If we fail to help those disenfranchised or less fortunate than ourselves, regardless of their nation of birth, then we have failed, at least from a Christian point of view.

It turns out most names hurled at people -- Leftist, Right-winger, whatever -- don't really apply, if you dig a little.

Generalizations are always wrong, and taxonomy is no substitute for understanding anyway.

-- Don Lee