The Vestibule of Hell: Why Left and Right Have Never Made Sense in Politics and Life

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and co-author
of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Infl

Hugh Graham is a journalist and writer, and this is his first book. To
Graham, the terms “left” and “right” carry heavy
baggage—religious, even cosmic. The labels divide people into two
groups, splitting society and destroying community. Graham argues from a
philosophical base—“this is really a story of the gradual movement
of a sacred morality away from the realm of the sacred into the domain
of the secular,” he writes—that a new politics is necessary to break
away from the old symbols and to connect people to their daily lives.

He may well be right, though few readers will be able to push through
his leaden prose, heavy philosophizing, and wide-ranging survey of
global thought. But as recent opinion polls in Canada demonstrate,
Canadians are totally confused by the two labels. Was the Canadian
Alliance right-wing and the NDP left-wing? Most Canadians didn’t know.
What was a left-wing issue? Again, puzzlement was the only answer. In an
ahistorical society where few know or care about past or present
politics, the old divisions may have already begun to disappear.
Regrettably, that same ignorance suggests that any new politics will
have a hard row to hoe in Canada, at least.