My point is that people here and elsewhere often talk about pragmatism as being some sort of balance between different ideological positions. But really beneficial pragmatic moves can be to the left of the left or the right of the right, or off the spectrum in another direction.
Liberals, conservatives, libertarians, comunitarians and other groups defined by ideologies contain pragmatic people. Some of the pragmatic people might even be more committed to the policies usually pushed by the ideology than some less pragmatic people, They are motivated by positive real world results. They just happen to believe that you get positive real world results by moving things in the direction of their ideology. Of course in addition to those "ideological pragmatists", you have pragmatists who haven't decided what ideas will produce better results, and one who have decided on some collection of ideas other than one of the commonly defined ideologies. And you certain have many ideological people who aren't pragmatists, they either would be totally blind to even the strongest evidence that one of their pet ideological ideas doesn't work well in a particular society or a particular time (or at all), or much less often, they might recognize it, but still care more about the ideology. But having strong ideological ideas isn't the opposite of pragmatism.
In New Zealand's case, a critical mass realized that they had to reduce the role of government in certain areas. Maybe the balance they found was a really good balance, maybe it was just better than what they had before, but going further (or not going quite as far) would have been better. A libertarian might argue for going much further, but that doesn't automatically make him an ideologue (blinded by ideology, or putting ideology above serious practical issues). |
