Kirk:
1) Ideology is inverted religion, denying the Christian doctrine of salvation through grace in death, and substituting collective salvation here on earth through violent revolution. Ideology inherits the fanaticism that sometimes has afflicted religious faith, and applies that intolerant belief to concerns secular.
2) Ideology makes political compromise impossible: the ideologue will accept no deviation from the Absolute Truth of his secular revelation. This narrow vision brings about civil war, extirpation of “reactionaries”, and the destruction of beneficial functioning social institutions.
3) Ideologues vie one with another in fancied fidelity to their Absolute Truth; and they are quick to denounce deviationists or defectors from their party orthodoxy. Thus fierce factions are raised up among the ideologues themselves, and they war mercilessly and endlessly upon one another, as did Trotskyites and Stalinists.
Kirk goes on to mention that ideology makes compromise impossible, but compromise is essential to good governance.
What sort of political compromises do you prefer?
ReplyDeleteHow about one that doesn't require Conservatives to move and Liberals to not move. How does that work?
ReplyDeleteHow about the one where John Foust just disappears like a fart into the wind?
ReplyDeleteLots of real estate for sale on Main Street in Jefferson. Lots of opportunity to deposit DNA and create reasonable doubt.