Ideology ain't a bad idea

The following from several college and high school level textbooks, and the amazing Wikipedia:

An ideology is an organized collection of ideas.

An ideology is a comprehensive vision, a way of looking at things.

An ideology is a comprehensive set of beliefs about people and the proper role of government.

The main purpose behind an ideology is to offer change in society through a cohesive, normative thought process.

Ideologies are systems of abstract thought (as opposed to mere ideation) applied to public matters and thus make this concept central to politics.

Implicitly every political tendency entails an ideology whether or not it is propounded as an explicit system of thought.

Now, if one is talking of methods for governance and policy and what not, would not the assumption be that organization, comprehensiveness, systematization, and cohesiveness are3 as good and desirable things? Of course not. Not, at least, if you are a standard-issue, semi-educated demagogue running for political office in America who understands that ideology is a bad word for a worse thing. People don’t like it and won’t vote for people who have it. Barrack O understands this, so he promises up one side and down the other that he won’t be ideological and will reject ideological solutions to problems, since they are not really solutions at all, just ideology. What BO does not understand, apparently, is what exactly ideology is. Otherwise he would be all for it. An alternative to ideology, after all, is mentioned above, too—ideation. Ideation is defined as:

A psychological state in which an individual generates alternate scenarios, creates fantasy worlds, or otherwise imagines things in a way that may contradict external reality.

That doesn’t sound good. And BO, in his quest to be non-ideological, embraces ideation to some considerable extent. He has created, or at least referenced, a fantasy world in which health care is free, the US is losing the war in Iraq and quitting it will make things much better, and terrorist countries have no clue why we are angry with them because we refuse to sit down with them and explain it. A fictional realm where he, BO, can “bring people together”— assuming by “people” he means more than just the left half of the Democratic Party. But, to his non-ideationating credit, he has not generated any half-baked instructions for linking external reality to his fantasy world. In fact, he has not given any instructions at all or even cryptic clues as to how he would do this or actully do anything. Doing isn't his forte-- talking is. But, he firmly says that real reality is bad, bad, bad. Change is good. Hope is good. Hope for change is even better. And change means no more ideology.

This demonization of ideology is all the more strange because when it comes to ideology, Barack is full of it. More of it than simple ideation, even, at least to the extent that progressive ideology and ideation can be distinguished. Even though he doesn’t realize it (and I honestly think he doesn’t. His typical elite education has bypassed galaxies full of things an aspiring national leader should know) that he is the most ideological presidential candidate there has been since Ronaldus Magnus Gippercius. Not a single position out of his well-exercised mouth has been remotely centrist, pragmatic, or, for that matter, new. In a word, it’s all ideological. Every single utterance has been firmly grounded in the tenets of the ideology that calls itself Progressivism, and the old, tired, stuck-in- the- 1960’s version of Progressivism at that: All things come from Government; including health, sustenance, identity, work, safety from yourself and others, and permission to do anything. Government, in other words, is much like mom and dad were in pre-FDR days.

When a candidate says he would raise taxes on the rich, even if such a rise might mean an actual reduction in government revenue juat because it is an issue of “fairness”--- that is pure ideology. When a candidate says we must unilaterally end a war, egardless of the long-term consequences, because military solutions are always false-- that is ideology. When he maintains we are losing a war we are actually winning that is ideation. Careful there. When he maintains that we can’t drill our way out of high oil prices, but we can tax our way out of a bad economy, that is ideology based in ideation. And says we should not drill anywhere for new oil or gas supplies of our own, regardless of prices and crisis and… you get the idea.

Of course the real alternatives to ideology are inconsistency, ad hoc-ism, making it up as you go along, winging it. When someone says they are a “centrist” or a "moderate" they usually mean they don’t know enough about governance to have a cohesive, organized set of preferences based on core beliefs. John McCain doesn’t have a strong, consistent ideology though he has pieces of a good one. BO has an overpowering one that he denies and doesn’t recognize. I still think having a bad ideology and not even knowing is much worse than having a basically good one that you stray from. But if the best thing about your ideas is not that they are good or even grounded in reality, but they are consistent, you should stick to touting that fact. Don’t dis ideology when that is all you’ve got, BO.