Timo Laine’s Journal

Is ideology bad?

4 May 2010

Although ideologies cannot fail, the word “ideology” is often used in a pejorative sense. For example, David Freddoso says about Barack Obama that Obama “definitely has an ideological, a rigid ideological view of just about every issue that you can think of”, implying that this is a bad thing. Daniel Larison writes in the same spirit about the mind of the American conservative movement that what “we have seen in recent years is not much the closing of such a mind as its replacement by an ideological mentality that is basically hostile to a conservative mind”. But is being ideological or having an ideology a bad thing?

Imagine P, an ideological person:

• P is someone who has fixed, rigid ideas about how things are and how everything should be done.
• P is not someone who can deal with issues directly but always resorts to applying his preconceptions to every problem.
• P is unable to accept a perfectly good solution to a problem, and instead follows the rigid principles of the ideology.
• With P, you can guess his answer even before you ask him a question.
• P might also be seen as clandestinely promoting the interests of a certain powerful group (although this is not necessary for the pejorative use of the term).

If this is a plausible characterization of an ideological person, it is easy to understand why the word ideology is used in a pejorative sense. However, I think that there are better ways to describe P than saying that he is ideological. What seems typical of him is not that he is ideological, a believer in an ideology.

Instead, P might more fruitfully be seen as close-minded, lacking in flexibility, being unable or unwilling to question authority or his own beliefs, stubborn, uncritical, unthinking, fundamentalist, and so forth. It is for these things that P should be criticized. He has severe faults, but being ideological is not one of them.

Now imagine Q, another ideological person:

• Q is someone who has firm ideas about how things are and how things should be done.
• Q always keeps in mind his convictions while thinking about the issues and refuses to compromise his core principles.
• Because he considers certain things nonnegotiable, Q sometimes ends up in a deadlock with his opponents.
• Q is many people of whom you have never heard. He is also Lech Walesa and Václav Havel. He is Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

My point is moderate: ideology should be kept separate from other things. Of course ideological people can be bad as well, but this is not because they are ideological, but either because they are bad people or because they follow a bad ideology. It is clear that bad people and bad ideologies should be criticized.

If close-minded and unquestioning people are ideological, it is only because anyone who believes in something has an ideology. When we criticize people, we should not criticize them for being ideological. Telling someone to be less ideological is like telling someone who uses rude language to talk less; it is not the talking that is the problem, but the rudeness.

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