Conservative ideology definition

As the politicos battle it out (or, at least make a show of battling it out) in D.C., I can’t help but be struck by Kirk’s brief but solid definition of “ideology” from his “Errors of Ideology.”

Unleashed by the French Revolution, ideologies have plagued the world for well over 200 years now. They continue to infect. We, the infected. . . . and, it festers and festers.

From Russell Kirk, “The Errors of Ideology.”

Ideology, in short, is a political formula that promises mankind an earthly paradise; but in cruel fact what ideology has created is a series of terrestrial hells. I set down below some of the vices of ideology.

1. Ideology is inverted religion, denying the Christian doctrine of salvation through grace in death, and substituting collective salvation here on earth through violent revolution. Ideology inherits the fanaticism that sometimes has afflicted religious faith, and applies that intolerant belief to concerns secular.
2. Ideology makes political compromise impossible: the ideologue will accept no deviation from the Absolute Truth of his secular revelation. This narrow vision brings about civil war, extirpation of “reactionaries”, and the destruction of beneficial functioning social institutions.
3. Ideologues vie one with another in fancied fidelity to their Absolute Truth; and they are quick to denounce deviationists or defectors from their party orthodoxy. Thus fierce factions are raised up among the ideologues themselves, and they war mercilessly and endlessly upon one another, as did Trotskyites and Stalinists.