I fight the left because of Venezuela, Cuba, and every place else where Marxist ideas have infected the minds of the masses to give assent to dictatorship. To me, the left will never conjure anything other than the ideas of misery, starvation, political violence, and destruction of life on a massive scale. The Soviet Union, the gulags, China, North Korea. Not one single success story.
You have a very narrow view of the left. How about civil rights, votes for women, basic protection from horrific working conditions?
How about the fight against absolute monarchy. How about the American Constitution and the Founding Fathers? Where does the term 'left' even come from? Who were Thomas Paine and Jefferson inspired by?
The long march towards basic decency in western society has been the task of 'the left' since the Enlightenment and maybe before.
EDIT:
> The Soviet Union, the gulags, China, North Korea.
To anyone on the libertarian left these are all abhorrences. I'm much more of a centrist than most who would identify with the left but - unless you swallow the narrative of state socialism whole, it's hard to include these examples in any authentic history of the left.
(not that that stopped a large percentage of leftist thinkers defending them way past the point of decency - to their eternal shame. Read up on the split between Sartre and Camus and the split between Orwell and most of the rest of the British left)
EDIT 2
> and every place else where Marxist ideas have infected the minds of the masses to give assent to dictatorship
Luckily there's no such thing as right-wing dictatorships, eh?
