Ideology Once Again: Between Past and Future

Political spectrum graphic © Camilo Sanchez | Wikimedia Commons

I am having second thoughts about my last post in which I assert that the nomination of Paul Ryan, because he is a right-wing ideologist, assures the re-election of Barack Obama. I don’t wish to revise my observations or judgment, but think I need to explain a bit more. I realize that I should be clearer about what I mean by ideology and why I think, and hope, that it spells defeat for the Republicans. My thoughts in two parts: today, I will clarify what I mean by ideology and my general political prediction; in my next post, I will consider further implications of ideological developments in American politics, addressing some doubts and criticism raised by Deliberately Considered readers.

I also want to point out that my thoughts on Ryan and ideology are related to my search for conservative intellectuals worthy of respect. In that what I have to say is motivated bya conservative suspicion of the role of a certain kind of idea and reason in politics, I wonder what Paul Gottfried and Alvino-Mario Fantini (two conservative intellectuals who have contributed to Deliberately Considered) would think. As I understand it, my last post was a conservative critique of right-wing ideology, pointing to its progressive consequences. As a centrist who wants to move the center left, I am hopeful about this, but I imagine committed conservatives would be deeply concerned. I am still having trouble finding a deliberate dialogue with them.

A brief twenty-five year old encounter comes to mind as I think about ideology and its political toxicity, trying to explain my Ryan judgment.

We were in a taxi in Prague in 1987, Jonathan Fanton, the President of the New School for Social Research, Ira Katznelson, the Dean of The New School’s Graduate Faculty, Jan Urban, a leading dissident intellectual-journalist activist, and I: the preliminary meeting between The New School and the small but very vibrant, creative and ultimately successful Czechoslovak democratic opposition. In the end, we did some good in that part of the world, starting with a donation of a . . .

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