Jonah Goldberg thinks that the word “ideologue” means nothing more than that you have an ideology. But Merriam-Webster defines “ideologue” as “an impractical idealist” or “an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology.”
It’s a pejorative term. It’s an insult. That Johah could write a whole book premised on the idea that Democrats deny that they are ideologues is almost stunning. People sometimes admit that they are impractical or idealistic, but they never admit that they are ideologues. And it’s a totally separate question from whether or not someone has an ideology that informs their politics.
I think I remember reading that Napoleon was the first to use the word to attack his opponents, but it had a less negative tone before him.
“It is thus to Napoleon that we owe the pejorative connotation that the term ‘ideologue’ carries to this day. We often think of an ideologue as an intellectual who is so absorbed in the ethereal world of abstractions that he is unable to deal with the practical requirements of politics. In this view, ideologues range from incompetent but relatively harmless dreamers and visionaries to dangerous fanatics (such as the Jacobins of the French Revolution) who will not hesitate to sacrifice their lives in the relentless pursuit of an ideal, utopian society.”
http://bit.ly/13dab4m
Aw, c’mon. Jonah made his name with this trick. His most successful book is all about how liberals are fascists, and vice versa. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and it works on several levels: 1) It redefines words for the benefit of his idiot audience; 2) It makes liberals mad (as well as anyone else who also cares about correct use of language, but they’re collateral damage); and 3) Idiot followers then get to sneer at the “elitists” who are “trying to tell them how to talk.” Or something.
Jonah knows English just fine. It’s the breathtaking cynicism you should be concerned about.
William F. Buckley would cringe.
Would he really? Perhaps the Bill Buckley of 1960 would have cringed but at the end of his life his writings suggest that he was getting comfortable with the “whatever it takes to help my side” viewpoint. His stuff about the 2000 election recount was particularly special.
And, to be honest, I’m not sure that he ever really had much in the way of principles either. His eloquent speech and writing served primarily, in the early years, to soften his extreme racism and make it acceptable for polite company. Style over substance.
Exactly. He’s not writing books so much as rewriting the dictionary.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
What liberals does it make mad any more? Ones that don’t read blogs on the intertubes? There is a reason he’s called Doughy Pantload, or Doughbob Loadpants.
Ideologue: someone so impractical that they think ideals should be involved in the decision-making process, not just in the marketing of decisions.
No worries. Nobody but liberals read Jonah anyway. His intended audience shuns books.
Ha! Wish it were so. Alas, lots of wingnuts throw Jonah quotes around all the time. Maybe it’s like the bible – almost none of them actually read it but the few who do provide a number of choice quotes that all the rest use.
Here’s Goldberg’s quote:
What would be so terrible about simply admitting Obama is an ideologue
Anyone who pretends to be a public intellectual should cringe at this malapropism. It reads like fingernails on a chalkboard when one sees that he really meant “admitting Obama has an [insert adjective] ideology.”
I don’t agree that Goldberg is doing this intentionally. How could one when the sentence makes him look like an unlettered fool? To quote George W. Bush, would anyone intentionally say “Is our children learning?” [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ej7ZEnjSeA] if he knew the correct way to say it? I can’t imagine.
I think Bill O’Reilly went on a rant one time because somebody called the pope a “primate.” Since that word was on my vocabulary list in the 7th grade, I could tell that Bill’O never had Mrs. Stanley for a teacher.
Bill’s the primate in the sense he meant. Loofa anyone?
LOL.
Another commonly misused term that drives me nearly crazy is opinionated. If you cal someone opinionated you are NOT merely saying they have strong opinions, and the word, like ideologue, is a pejorative.
Soemone who is opinionated holds obstinately and unreasonably to their own opinions, and is obstinate or conceited with regard to the merit of his own opinions; conceitedly dogmatic.
You are certainly right in your understanding of the word “ideologue”. It is a pejorative term.
As you hint, “ideology” is less pejorative. Probably that’s because an ideologue is a true-believer, whereas an ideology is something that exists only in the world of ideas, from which individuals can pick and choose, take it or leave it, although it is characteristic of an ideology that they are self-contained systems that expect to be taken whole or not at all.
There is nothing contradictory about someone being influenced by Marxism, or simply having something (anything!) in common with Marxism (such as that the state has some legitimate role in social policy) for example, without actually being a Marxist. Ideological Marxists and ideological anti-Marxists cannot make this distinction. So for the Birchers, Eisenhower was a Communist.
I think of ideology as a kind of petrified philosophy. Philosophers consider other philosophies and refine their understanding in the process. They can engage in constructive dialogue. Ideologies dialogue only on details WITHIN the system. Everything outside the system is regarded as hostile, even when (as is frequently the case) it shares genuine affinities. It has to be all or nothing.
But even among ideologues there are degrees of pragmatism and purism. Although the pragmatism is usually ad hoc and outside the system. Maybe later the ideologues can figure out a way to rationalize it.
The true ideologue uses ideology not for thought in pursuit of truth, but as a substitute for thought. The ideology has an answer to every question, it has already been determined and must be rigidly adhered to.
In contemporary America, the RW ideologue is far more prevalent than the left-wing version, and President Obama is anything but an ideologue. But I never realized how many LW ideologues there were until I became familiar with blog comments (present company largely excluded). Groupthink is definitely alive and well on the left, and I find it no more appealing than RW groupthink. But at the present time it is far less threatening to the country (except to the extent that it is such delicious fodder for the RWNJs like Jonah Goldberg and his admirers).
It’s what happens when you don’t let facts and reality inform your politics
OT: what’s with McCain in Syria? legislative branch, why is he there?
Walnuts is just grandstanding. Look at the plus side: as Atrios notes, he wasn’t on our teevee yesterday.
EU Indecision: Arms Embargo to Syria Ends
Ideologue is someone inseparable and committed to an idea, bad or good.
What words define # 1,2?