Much political disagreement involves pegging one side or another into various camps, which serves to disparage one particular side rather than actually explain or defend either position. One side claims to be pragmatic while their opponents are simply out of touch with reality. One side only cares about results while the other is purely ideological. This last distinction is worth spending a bit of time on.
As Jonah Goldberg recently pointed out, “ideologue” is one of the most overused ad hominem attacks regularly heard in our political discourse. But sometimes it has its place. Many would argue the current White House administration falls into this category.
The nation was given a perfect clue into the ideological nature of President Obama’s worldview when Charlie Gibson asked in 2008 why Obama planned to raise capital gains taxes even though, historically, revenue has fallen after each increase of rates in the past 30 years. Obama justified this raise in perhaps the most telling four words he ever uttered: “for purposes of fairness.”
Obama’s ideological commitment was not to gain revenue to help the poor through social programs; it was to chop down the people at the top so the next income inequality pie chart to land on his desk would have more pleasing ratios, the actual plight of the poor be damned.
The dangerous type of ideologue is not someone who has a commitment to principles of what human flourishing looks like and who seeks to bring it about in an ethical way. An ideologue is someone who reaches a point of isolation from what once was good intention, but has exchanged empathy for stubbornness, and set ambition above the welfare of any particular group of people or humanity itself. This is a dangerous state to be in, for it is in this state of hermetic separation of one’s moral intuitions that the greatest evils can be permitted to occur.
