What works, works is my guiding light: Pragmatism.
Many people, even many highly ideological people, would agree. They just might see their ideological tilt as "what works".
Partially its a matter of belief about the effects of different types of policies. This is the area where you can reasonably try to be pragmatic, and recognize that one broad collection of policy ideas probably doesn't work in every situation, and you look for ideas from different groups, and try to apply what you think will work.
But a big portion of it is also opinions about "what works", means. You have to have a goal to decide if something works. It works or doesn't work in terms of achieving that goal. Different ideological views have different goals.
A "progressive", might think that higher taxes (from today's levels, if not from much higher levels) will increase government income, and that this increase (by allowing more government spending) will increase wealth. He disagrees with me about the practical effects of the policy idea. But lets say he did agreed with me, that the higher taxes would reduce economic growth. He might still be for them, to support social spending, "increase equality", or achieve some other "progressive"/"liberal"/"socialist" end.
If his aim was to increase economic growth, and he realized that higher taxes would hurt this aim, then he would be pragmatic by no longer opposing them, but often the point isn't different ways of getting the same aims, but different aims. "Pragmatic" vs. "non-pragmatic", looses much of its meaning when the issue is not "how do we achieve desired aim X", but "should we go for aim X, or aim Y". |
