The End of Time
20th June 2022
ZMan does history.
The terms Left and Right have been ubiquitous in Western public discourse for so long people just assume they are universal constants. The fact is though, they are neither universal nor constant. There is no African Right or Burmese Left. These cultures have not been shaped by the French Revolution. Similarly, what it means to be on the Right or Left has changed over time. Today’s left-wing American genuinely detests yesterday’s left wing American, who is probably on the Right today.
There is not much in the way of ideology on either side. There has not been an important thinker on either side in a long time. The last important radical thinker was probably Herbert Marcuse or perhaps John Rawls. On the Right, Paul Gottfried and Sam Francis are recent, but their influence is only on the fringe. The main driver of politics is the Left and they are wildly ignorant of the intellectual history that shapes left-wing politics today.