Is Pragmatism Ballsing-up left-right?
Someone was going to use it in a title, so there it is. Bear with me here, the argument of this article takes quite a while to get going… This post started out with the intention of arguing (in an analagous way to how Francis Fukyama discussed history) that the left-right political spectrum is dead. However, en route it became clear that this view was untenable; it exists alright, but in a definitively different form. It would be easy to point to consensus as the end of left-right, but Thaterism exposed the political bergschrund of the spectrum and reopened the debate once more; indeed, consensus only became a universal term for 45-79 after Thather had mixed things up. My argument would have it that the old Left, the John McDonnells and such of Britain, and the “Third Way” followers (proponents of Anthony Giddens), who, with the David Davises and Thatcherites of our nation, make up the left-right picture, are competing for the same ends justified by differing means. Old left-right po
