Let's Hope Ideology Keeps Getting in the Way...

"California residents owe Cogdill a huge thank you for his willingness to set aside his political ideology..."

-- Merced Sun Star Editorial

Picture a candle-lit room above the Edes & Gill print shop of Boston, on a cold, clear Boston December night in 1773. A group of New England men are painting their faces soot-black and cranberry-red, in their version of Huron war paint. One of them pauses, and thinks out loud before sticking a trio of hawk feathers into his hair.

"Just wait," he says. "I know the British parliament is taxing us without our consent, but this protest we're taking tonight. Are we allowing ideology to trump a more practical solution?"

It isn't a likely scenario, and not just because the Sons of Liberty didn't care too much, by this point, about their conflict-resolution skills: the word 'ideology' had not yet come into use. Karl Marx used it to describe the way the ruling class justifies its assumptions about economics and culture. Napoleon used the term ideologues to ridicule anyone who disagreed with him politically. Its most pejorative use has been in describing someone who won't accept new facts, or new methods, because they don't fit a pre-conceived ideology. Michael Dukakis boldly declared his quest for the presidency would be about "competence, not ideology." President Obama has similarly warned that practical solutions must not be obstructed by ideology.

The trouble with such declarations is that it begs the question: what form will this competence or this practicality take? What will it cost? What surpassing truths will be violated just to meet the needs of the moment? Are we really criticizing narrow-mindedness, or are we looking for a way to outrun the truth?

I talked about Clint Eastwood's film "The Changeling" yesterday, but I didn't mention that the film graphically depicts the death by hanging of a remorseless killer. The families of his victims watch the murder climb the steps, receive the black hood, and suffer the noose.

Mary and I were talking about the movie, and she observed that Grandma Bea's 20th century life span has included a stretch of years that saw murderers go from being despicable villains, worthy of execution, to misunderstood victims of some childhood slight, and thus deserving of "rehabilitation." The rise of Freud and the social sciences and the endless clamor for state-sponsored study of the criminal mind--along with lifetime care of sociopaths--has created a political patronage system for everything from elementary school psychologists to social workers to paralegals to prison guards. The 20th century assumption--ideology in the negative sense--is that we simply must incarcerate and treat the violent. A former age would have simply executed them.

The whole criminal care superstructure is extremely expensive, but it came about because a "brave new world" of pseudo "social scientists" ridiculed old school "ideologues," who were merely affirming that the truths of ancient scripture were incontrovertible. We were told only "hide-bound ideology" could object to the untested notion that prisons could actually rehabilitate rapists and murderers. On another but arguably related front, the ancient truth was that care for the poor should be an individual or a village obligation--not the work of a monstrous state or federal monolith. Similarly, law enforcement was supposed to be an individual obligation, with every man armed and ready to conduct citizen's arrests, and even fight for timeless constitutional principles--as the tea party brigade did in 1773. Now, it's all replaced with a standing army of specialists in every conceivable branch of law enforcement, education, mental health, and criminal justice. The timeless ideology of "swift, local, and accountible" has been replaced by the new-fangled "competence" of "centralized, scientific, and professional."

So, how's that all working, people?



Is it "ideology" to keep the expensive incarceration and "rehabilitation" facilities at full-staff, or would it be "ideology" to return to ancient, and less expensive, truths?

What is "competence" and what is "ideology?"

I suppose it depends on who is getting paid for it--and who is doing the paying.