Opposing Ideals

Power to the Sheeple! The pressure is on from all sides for people to reject "ideologies". The latest call comes from David Brooks writing in the NWA version of the Demo-zette. Brooks wants Republicans to forget about the limited government ideology of Goldwater and Reagan. He contrasts ideological people with "regular people" and redefines "freedom" to mean that the government should provide for all your needs. It is a repackaging of the old siren song to forget about your beliefs and just accept the new order of things. Just take the free food offered on the end of that fish hook....

The powers that run both Democratic and Republican parties don't want anyone to have an ideology, because such people are too hard to manipulate. They prefer nice, compliant sheep, thoughtlessly bleating away peacefully in the fields, right up until the moment they are fleeced and/or eaten.

Last October we got another siren-singer trying to get us to forgo ideology, none other than Bill Clinton. Its the same argument, so here I re-print what I said last October....

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Bill Clinton was in Jonesboro yesterday. The article was short, but here is how Clinton ended it: "
This year's balloting comes down to a clear choice between common sense politics and extremism, he said.

"If you're an ideologue, you have to live in a state of denial. To me, you have to live in a reality-based world," Clinton said. "To the ideologues evidence is irrelevant and reason is a waste of time. What I see all around the country is that people want to get away from ideology.""

An ideology is an integrated system of thought about life or human culture. An idealogue CAN be defined as an idealist, or it can be defined as someone who adheres to an integrated system of thought. The kind of integration necessary for logical consistency. It does not surprise me that a man who can stand with his wife on the steps of a church with a large Bible under his arm on Easter Sunday and hours later get oral sex from an intern under the Oval Office desk would be strongly opposed to "logical consistency" and "integrated systems of thought". Clinton is the King of Compartmentalization. He feels threatened by people with integrity.

Integrity is defined as "unimpared; a firm adherence to a code, esp. of moral or artistic values; undivided." Bill Clinton has divided his mind. You can't have integrity without a moral code, that is to say, an ideaology. Clinton has made every compromise you can imagine to get where he is, and it bothers him that some people are not willing to.

Or maybe Clinton is an idealouge too, but his idealogy is the protection, advancement, and glorification of Bill Clinton. To him, someone who is not willing to lie and cheat to get ahead is "not realistic". But the man who can't even settle on "what the meaning of is is" cannot be trusted to define reality for the rest of us. Reality is that you can get a shortcut to power if you spin, threaten, twist, bribe, and tell people what they want to hear even if you know it is not true. Even idealists know that. But the person of integrity will not take "power" if the price to get it is the corruption of ones own soul.

Someday, when the terrible price for believing foolishness has made itself known, we can only hope that people will seek out idealogues as rulers, for those are the only kind of people capable of governing honestly and consistently. The rest, whose only idealogy is to make yourself look good no matter what the long term costs, will lead us to ruin.

The truth is that our political system, including much of the media, does hate and distrust those with a firm ideaology. That is because people with an ideology are too hard to manipulate. Our rulers would prefer that our emotions, not our ideas, control our lives. That way they can simply have two cults of personality, one the Bush cult and the other the Clinton cult, who can be swayed and manipulated completely apart from policy. At that point, they can do anything they want to us. Clinton could be against policy X one day, and Bush for it, and the cultists of the two would rail at one another. The following year, they could switch positions and the same people would still rail at one another, defending the policies they previously attacked when their champion opposed it.

Now more than ever, we need an ideology. We need a system of connected thought that gives integrity to public policy.