Monday, April 19, 2010

Russell Kirk's Wariness of Neoconservatives

From The Heritage Foundation

In their publications, the Neoconservatives thrust upon us a great deal of useful information, and obviously are posse ssed of considerable knowledge of the world about us. But in the understanding of the human condition and in the apprehension of the accumulated wisdom of our civilization, they are painfully deficient.

Infatuation with Ideology. An instance of this lack of wisdom is the Neoconservatives' infatuation with ideology. Some of you ladies and gentlemen present here today may have heard some years ago my exchange, on this very platform, with Mr. Irving Kristol, concerning ideology. He and various of his colleag u es wish to persuade us to adopt an ideology of our own to set against Marxist and other totalist ideologies. Ideology, I venture to remind you, is political fanaticism: at best it is the substitution of slogans for real political thought. Ideology animate s, in George Orwell's phrase, "the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets."


Read the entire article here.

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