Ideology

Recently I made the announcement that I had officially broken with libertarianism. Thanks to friends on a Facebook group I am active in, Conservatives for Sanity, I have gotten several views of this article. Lately I have written various articles on the issue of my political transformation and have in those articles bashed "ideologues." I think it is only fair to explain what I mean. To simply use the term "ideologue" to disarm liberals, conservatives, libertarians and others who disagree with me is to be as unfair to them as they have often been to moderates. Yes, and I must acknowledge that there are many, many passionate liberals, conservatives, and libertarians who are fair and I feel I owe it to them to explain what I mean.

Let me start off by saying that to some extent everybody has an ideology, if an ideology is to be defined as two parts, part A being goals and part B being means to achieve those goals. Yet there is a difference between somebody who has an ideology and those who are ideologues. Ideologues are people who hold their ideology above all practical considerations, meaning concerns for the feasibility of their beliefs and for the consequences of their beliefs. One key difference between ideologues and non ideologues is that ideologues focus almost exclusively on part B, the means. Everybody (or almost everybody) says they want a good economy. In fact I'd argue that most people, deep down, want the same things. Most people want jobs, money, health care, education for their children, safety from criminals, and so on and so forth. Yes, we all have our differences in how to get there but most of us see the world through a vague utilitarian paradigm. I've thought about this a lot lately, how most people want the same things. Even ideologues want these things to some extent, but they are not willing to sacrifice an ideological point. I will use a historical example and a current example to illustrate this.

I think a key example of ideology run amok is Marxism. Karl Marx himself was more of a sociologist than a political activist, but he certainly developed a political way of seeing the world. He himself was not the boogeyman he is often presented is. The issue came when ideologues gained control of Marxism. Marxism started off ostensibly as a way for the proletarian to improve their lot. Communism, the ultimate goal of Marxism, simply does not work. The proletariat's lot was not improved in communist societies for the most part. The communist society seen as most successful, Yugoslavia, was only successful because it embraced some free market reforms from a very early stage. The same can be said for China today. Nonetheless in the Soviet Union, Albania, and Cuba the hardliners held on to communism to the damage of their people. Communism promised utopia and when utopia failed to materialize, the ideologues rationalized. They were ideologues in the truest sense because for them communism as a concept was much more important than actually improving the life of the workers, which was what communism was supposed to be all about.

In the present day there is another example of ideology run amok, and that is the far-right Tea Party mentality prevalent among many Republicans. There was a time when Republicans argued that free market capitalism and smaller government were best because they worked and big government didn't. Reagan said, "Government is not the solution, it is the problem." This was a profoundly pragmatic statement. For the right free markets were a purely utilitarian project. Agree or disagree, the right genuinely believed that a rising tide would lift all boats. Now it is different. Republicans say that any and all tax increases are off the table in any debt ceiling deal. Presumably if Obama asked for a tax increase of one cent they would not give it to him. This has become an article of faith in the Republican Party. Now Republicans argue still that low taxes are good for the economy, but is damaging the credit of the United States good for the economy. The answer is absolutely and unequivocally not. In the end it is apparent that the concern of the Republicans is not for the economy but for the ideological point that taxes are bad. Let us also not forget the Minnesota government shutdown going on in the news right now. Republicans are cheering it on, meanwhile vital services of government are shut down. If you live in Minnesota do not expect to go to a state park for this Fourth of July, because they are shut down. How is this good for the people of Minnesota? It isn't. The reason is because Republicans do not care about the good of the people anymore. It is not to say they are "greedy" or "evil," it is just to say they believe in the ideology so much that they are willing to sacrifice results. It has become like a basketball game to them in which the goal is to score as many ideological points as possible, not to realistically work to solve the problems facing America.

So when I criticize "ideologues" what I am criticizing is not the ideology itself, but the tendency to hold the ideology's tenets as more important than actually improving society. I have no problem with liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism, nor even ultimately communism or anarchism in principle. What I do have a problem with is those adherents of those ideologies who fail to show how meaningful results can come about in the real world. This is precisely why I left libertarianism, because libertarianism holds up the abstract ideological goal of "liberty" above all else. Thus if it was shown unequivocally that liberty in a certain area would be a bad thing libertarians, at least many of them, as an article of faith would still stand by it. Case in point is are my views on socialized medicine, which I recently made known. I still retain many libertarian leanings on many issues but on this issue I am simply not a libertarian anymore because I am convinced that socialized health insurance is superior to a market based system. To remain a good libertarian ideologue I would have to say, "You know what, socialized medicine may sound good but it conflicts with libertarian principles so I can't support it." That's why I've left libertarianism in a nutshell. So no, I do not hate ideology, I just have a problem with those who would sooner blow up the world than concede they are wrong. Long ago somebody criticized the economist John Maynard Keynes because he had reversed course on monetary policy during the Great Depression. Keynes' response to this man was as followed, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"