- published: 08 Apr 2015
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A reactionary is an individual that holds reactionary political viewpoints which cause them to seek to return to a previous state (the status quo ante) in a society. Reactionaries are considered to be one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is radicalism. While it has not been generally considered positive to be regarded as a reactionary it has been adopted as a self-description by some such as H. L. Mencken,Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie and John Lukacs.
The French Revolution gave the English language three politically descriptive words denoting anti-progressive politics: reactionary, conservative and right. Reactionary derives from the French word réactionnaire (an early nineteenth-century coinage), and conservative from conservateur, identifying monarchist parliamentarians opposed to the revolution. In this French usage, reactionary denotes "a movement towards the reversal of an existing tendency or state" and a "return to a previous condition of affairs." The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first English-language usage in 1799 in a translation of Lazare Carnot's letter on the Coup of 18 Fructidor.
I know your kind
You oppose everything and everyone
You love to sit and criticize
Arm chair bravado, easier said than done
Not happy unless you're unhappy
You play the martyr game
You ain't got nothing
So we should have nothing
Your only pleasure is in someone else's pain
So the world owes you a living
While you sit back and dream
Of success you envy in others
You won't lift a finger
You're so reactionary
So reactionary
I know your kind
You resent authority
Argue til you're blue in the face
Won't let others state their case
(you talk)
You talk but you never listen
And then you wonder why people don't
See things the way that you do
But then, everyone's wrong and you're right
So the world owes you a living
While you sit back and dream
Of success you envy in others
You won't lift a finger
You're so reactionary