Conservatives and Ideologues

"Name me a great centrist," Mr. Right challenged Mr. Peepers in the office this evening.

Mr. Peepers seemed perplexed, which may be understandable in retrospect, since Mr. Right believes that there is no such thing as a "great centrist."

Nevertheless, Mr. Right offered analogical suggestions. "Ted Kennedy is a great liberal, from the liberal perspective," he said with a hint of contempt, "Ronald Reagan was a great conservative." But Peepers had still not come up with a great centrist. This seemed to confirm Mr. Right's opinion.

Centrists, he opined, are nothing but fence straddlers who are unwilling to be honest about what they believe. Mr. Right himself believes that ideological correctness is essential to national well-being. Democrats and liberals must be defeated, he affirmed, because "their ideology is totally wrong for this country."

Mr. Right has no problem identifying himself with a conservative ideology. This struck me as strange, because I've read self-described conservative writers who've gladly defined their conservatism as an absence of ideology. Jeffrey Hart, an editor of National Review who has called George W. Bush the worst president in American history, says, "Ideology is always wrong because it edits reality and paralyzes thought." Many writers for The American Conservative magazine second this viewpoint. These conservatives claim to be guided by experience and the wisdom of the past. They define ideology as abstract, ahistorical, a demand that the world must be a certain way because we wish it so. They label neocons as "radicals" rather than "conservatives" because the neos self-consciously seek to instigate "revolutionary" change around the world. Mr. Right would deny that he is a neocon or a Bushie. He might dispute the definition of "ideology" offered here, but I didn't have time to test the idea, since my workday was done and I had a bus to catch.