Left, right, left, right — halt!!! one, two

LONDON —  Oh Gawd!!!! Here we go again. In Germany, Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats win a handsome victory while the Social Democratic Party slumps to its worst defeat since the war. Here in Britain we are just waiting until next spring when the David Cameron-led Conservative Party will smash Labour (if opinion polls are to be believed and as a voting member of the British public I say, believe them).

And now come the stories about the rise of the Right, the collapse of the Left!!

Stop it.  Stop it right now, all editors, reporters, and think-tank types with good degrees from fancy private colleges opining in quarterly journals few people read.  Stop writing this tripe right now!!!

There is no left and there is no right any more in Europe, at least not by the historic definitions of those terms.  There is only a center ground and all politicians with a hope of electoral success occupy it.

Europe's left — with its historic ties to statist socialism is dead, dead, dead.  It was executed 30 years ago by Francois Mitterand when he began his three terms as president of France and given the coup de grace 15 years ago by Tony Blair when he got his Labour Party to re-write its constitution eliminating clause 4, which dedicated Labour to having the government own the means of production. Blair's socialism went down very well with the socialites in formerly Conservative voting areas of west London and the Home Counties.  It managed to get Labour elected three consecutive times despite the Iraq fiasco.

The same process has been going on in right wing parties, as well.  Do you think Britain's Conservatives bear any resemblance to the party Margaret Thatcher led? Its leader David Cameron, Britain's likely next prime minister, is on record as saying he won't touch the National Health Service — arguably the British "left's" greatest achievement and he is completely committed to Green causes, even if it means passing regulations that constrain business.  Do you honestly think Angela Merkel is going to do to Germany's unions what Thatcher did to Britain's now that she heads a "right-wing" government? This is the woman who OK'ed the world's first "cash for clunkers" program, the ultimate state intervention into the workings of the market place. Because of that, Germany's experience with the recession has been less bloody than a lot of other places.  Same can be said of France where the "Right" has been ascendant for several years ... Has Monsieur Sarkozy dismantled the more "leftish" elements of the French state ... non.

Left and right have meaning only where radical politics have real purchase in a society.  In Europe that is only at the fringe so there is no need to apply those terms in Europe. The U.S. is different. The fringe has taken over a mainstream political party turning the Republicans into the only party in the civilized world that is truly radical. So you can use the appelation "right-wing" when discussing U.S. politics.  But the Republicans are not counter-balanced by a radical party of the left.  The only people who see radicalism in the Democrats are the propagandizers of the "right." Impartial observers have yet to detect it. Therefore America has a "right-wing" but no "left-wing."

So I reiterate my call to colleagues in journalism: stop using the terms "left" and "right" in that stale, hackneyed way (except when talking about the party of Jim DeMint).  And readers ... skip to the next article if you see those terms being used in your local paper.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/united-kingdom/090929/left-right-left-right-halt-one-two