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Barriers to a Western Ideology
| Article
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10759 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1986 |
2,548 Words |
| Author
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William A. Rusher
William A. Rusher is publisher of National Review. This
article is printed with permission from the World Media
Conference. |
It may at first be wondered whether the West really needs an "ideology" at all. Nineteenth-century conservatives of the Burkean traditionalist school, reacting against the programmatic reformism of the early socialists, and even against Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and the other rather schematic concepts of classical liberalism, took strong exception to the notion that an "ideology" is useful to a society, let alone necessary.
Our response probably depends upon what we mean by an "ideology." My dictionary specifies several meanings, the first of which is simply "visionary theorizing." That is certainly one of the things that 19th-century conservatives were condemning, and we can surely all agree that it is one sort of ideology we can do without.
But the second meaning of the word is put forward in three slightly varying forms: "2a: a systematic body of concepts, especially about human life or culture. 2b: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or cultural. 2c: the integrated assertions, theories, and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program." As thus defined, it is hard to conclude that some sort of ideology is not useful, and perhaps even essential to the health of society.
Certainly the existence and utility of a dominant ideology is obvious enough in a communist or fascist society. In the case of communism, the "laws" of history, as deduced by Karl Marx, and the role of the Communist party in helping to bring the future to birth, provide a set of "integrated assertions, theories, and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program." In the case of fascism, notions of racial superiority replace the "laws" of history, but provide a "program" of sorts nonetheless. In less malignant forms of social organization too, however, many different sets of "assertions, theories, and aims" have served as the foundation of a sociopolitical program, and hence of an "ideology."
In the case of Western civilization, there was "a systematic body of concepts" almost from the start: the doctrines of Christianity. The West, to be sure, is older even than Christianity. But from at least the time of Constantine, which is to say for nearly 1700 years, until quite recently, Western civilization acknowledged the primacy of Christianity's "systematic body of concepts…about human life," and derived from these, however clumsily and inadequately, its various sociopolitical programs. Christianity, then, can fairly claim to be--or rather to have been--the characterizing ideology of Western
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