Armstrong: What conservatives keep getting wrong

By Paul Armstrong

Friday, October 31, 2008

"All human knowledge is tainted with an ‘ideological’ taint. It pretends to be more true than it is. It is finite knowledge, gained from a particular perspective; but it pretends to be final and ultimate knowledge.” — Reinhold Niebuhr

It’s a demoralizing time to be a Republican. The nomination of Sarah Palin has split the party’s ideological wing from its moderate pragmatists. Adherents of the former comprise an ideological school that came of age during the Reagan administration. Elevated by Reagan’s rise and vindicated by his successes, they brought the concentrated support of their movement behind George W. Bush, and their efforts brought him to power.

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Photo by Max Rinkel

Today, they resist the disconcerting implications of Bush’s failures. Their reaction to the manifest failures of their ideology during the Bush years has been to demand ever stricter conformity with conservative doctrine.

The nomination of Palin is their coup, and their aim is to ensure the preeminence within GOP ranks of their ideology, an increasingly rigid canon, which fails to distinguish the present from 1981 and Barack Obama’s policies from unfettered socialism.

This tendency of conservative elites to ideological purity is troubling not only because it portends political oblivion for the GOP in the short-term, but also because it runs counter to the political flexibility and governing pragmatism that philosopher Edmund Burke hailed as essential components of stable governments.

Indeed, history carries stern lessons about political systems riven by such ideological hackery. It was similar ideological devotion that animated irreligious European intellectuals throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and the history books are replete with chronicles of warring movements and nationalisms, failed governments and other murderous consequences of that period.

Customarily in America, it is left to liberals, leftists and godless intellectuals to make functional religions of their political ideologies, but now, conservatives too exhibit such tendencies.

The free market is their gospel, and Reagan is their messiah, and anything less is socialism.

Observe Fox News commentator Sean Hannity systematically dividing each of his callers and television guests into monolithic blocks of conservative true believers and unconverted liberals. Visit the Web site of the Heritage Foundation, a renowned conservative think tank, where a large banner asks with apparent seriousness, "What would Reagan do?"

Religion is by nature a dogmatic, uncompromising pursuit. Politics ought to be a pragmatic, flexible one. This important distinction goes back to Alexis de Tocqueville.

To de Tocqueville, the importance of religion in American life is that it acts as a check on the seductive ideologies to which human nature is naturally drawn. It trumps politics, relegating it to lesser realms where moderation and compromise are apt to prevail. By contrast, when the impassioned, uncompromising character of religious disputes is applied to politics, the result is factionalism, division, conflict and the obstruction of good governance.

When conservative political elites elevate ideology to the place of religion, it should raise red flags for moral reasons, if not strategic ones.

If far too few red flags are being raised, perhaps a well-deserved electoral landslide defeat early next week will do the trick.

— Armstrong is a Dallas senior in business.

Comments

connerm (anonymous) says...

Our ideology didn't fail during the Bush years. The members of the Republican party who were in Congress (and Bush) did not adhere to it. In the few areas they did we have seen success.

The Bush tax cuts, for example, stimulated the economy to rousing success without sacrificing federal revenue. We faced deficits because of bloated spending, not something a conservative would advocate.

October 31, 2008 at 10:35 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

KU88 (anonymous) says...

The conservative ideology is still a winning ideology compared to the Leftist ideology. As connerm said, it's the people in Washington (Congress, not the President) that were supposed to implement the ideology that failed, not the ideology. The Republicans in Congress allowed spending to get out of control, becoming more like Democrats in the process. This is where they failed.

Leftists want to pin the economic calamity we are in on George W Bush. Bush hasn't failed insofar as his economic ideology. Look around: He faced a recession courtesy of the late-90s dot com bust as he took office; he faced 9/11. The economy rebounded with vigor. Then, with democrats pushing for easy lending and the Fed keeping interests rates too low in 2003, the housing price bubble was created which has now burst.

None of this was the doing of GWB. It's amazing that it has taken THIS long for our economy to stagger given the events of the last 8 yrs.

Bush failed where he: 1) Did not invite democrats to give their input, 2) Acted unilaterally in world politics, 3) Mishandled the oversite of the global war on terror.

NOTE: These are personal failings, NOT a failing of the conservative ideology.

October 31, 2008 at 11:11 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Prezandrew (anonymous) says...

Just another leftist bashing piece of garbage that wouldn't hold under a minuscule amount of scrutiny, followed by a desperate attempt to save the failed conservative ideology by pretending that it just simply wasn't adhered to properly.

Give me a break. The conservative ideology in America is doomed to failure for its creation of the super rich and utter moral failure that it, once again, tries to blame on leftists.

And then of course, there's the predictable blaming of the minority secular population. It will never cease to amaze me how Christians can somehow be both the persecuted majority while launching endless bigoted attacks on other religious groups and secular people.

I've got a new slogan in mind for the 21st century:

"It's your ridiculous faith, stupid!"

November 1, 2008 at 9:58 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

connerm (anonymous) says...

Please Prezandrew, give us some examples of conservative legislation that has made our situation worse.

November 2, 2008 at 7:35 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

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