Some Thoughts on Ideology

This post was originally published on a now defunct Blog last August. I woudn't want to lose it.

There are those who confuse ideology with principles, so let me illustrate the difference. Once there lived a prophet who made the following observation. “The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out.” He went on to describe a mind stretching as high as the utmost heaven as well as contemplating the darkest abyss—the area he called “the broad expanse of eternity.” This is also how we obtain principles. One by one, we gather them into our souls as we travel through time and gain our experience.

Ideology, on the other hand, is bought with a single, seemingly inexpensive purchase. We buy a party line. We become a Republican or a Democrat. We accept a manifesto or a political platform. Thoughtful people—especially devout and thoughtful people—see that at this point a bargain is being struck with the devil. All ideology results from a compromise that God’s children make with evil. The devil permits us some good with which to comfort and cloak ourselves so long as we agree to accept and promote some evil that he intends. No better illustration of this bargain can be found than in the respective ideologies of Conservatism and Liberalism—which is to say the déjà vu of the Republican and Democratic platforms.

I recently read an essay by Wendell Berry and found there a convincing description of the evils these apparently combative ideologies promote.

"The comedy begins when [conservatism and liberalism] confront each other. Conservatism strongly supports “family values” and abominates lust. But it does not disassociate itself from the profits accruing from the exercise of lust (and, in fact, of the other six deadly sins), which it encourages in its advertisements. The “conservatives” of our day understand pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony and sloth as virtues when they lead to profit or political power. Only as unprofitable or unauthorized personal indulgences do they rank as sins, imperiling salvation of the soul, family values, and national security.

Liberalism, on the contrary, understands sin as a private matter. It strongly supports “protecting the environment” which is that part of the world that surrounds, at a safe distance, the privately-owned body. “The environment” does not include the economic landscapes of agriculture and forestry or their human communities, and it does not include the privately-owned bodies of other people…The left believes that and individual’s body is a property belonging to that individual absolutely: the owners of bodies may, by right, use them as they please, as if there was no God, no legitimate government, no community, no neighbors, no posterity. This supposed right is manifested in the democratizing of “sexual liberation”; in the popular assumption that marriage has been “privatized” and so made subordinate to the wishes of individuals; in the proposition that the individual is “autonomous”; in the legitimation of abortion as birth control—in the denial, that is to say, that the community, the family, one’s spouse, or even one’s own soul might exercise a legitimate proprietary interest in the use one makes of one’s body. And this too is tragic, for it sets us “free” from responsibility and thus from the possibility of meaning." (From Rugged Individualism in Wendell Berry’s The Way of Ignorance, Counterpoint, 2005)

Principled men and women become extremely uncomfortable when confronted with the “either/or” dilemma of conflicting ideologies. Spiritually on edge, they long for but cannot find a more principled way to participate in the political life of the community. In the end, they find themselves surfing back and forth through the decades, riding the conflicting waves, trying to measure threats and do the least amount of harm. But not so the ideologues, who would ride their adopted tsunami well beyond the shorelines and into the homes of their community, making society a mere backwash to the interests of some political party.

I once heard Phillip Roth remark that you cannot see through an ideology because your ideology sees for you; and it is true that a kind of blindness comes upon Israel with the introduction of parties and ideologies. Many Christians are being enticed from principle into ideology as they find their faith being threatened by the insecurities of life. All of European history might be summarized in that sentence. Now, as we once again watch our national political drama take shape, it seems that we too are succumbing to the pull of ideology. We surrender to the forces of ideology when no good can be found in a political opponent and no criticism can be tolerated of our own standard-bearer. In this way, governments descend slowly into various kinds of tribalisms. Mass murder becomes a real possibility because ideology spawns tribalism and tribalism, genocide.

I maintain hope when I remember R. S. Thomas’s poem, A Line from St. David’s, wherein it is written, “…the way back / is not so far as the way forward.” To travel further along the road of ideology is to lose those precious principles with which the American people were once endowed—principles that were obtained by those careful, ponderous and solemn thoughts that constituted our national experience. Wisdom insists that we do not travel so very far away that the way back no longer remains close at hand.