The way to tell an ideologue from a realist, and the reason realists are not simply ideologues posing as something else, is that the ideologue will persist in a course of action long after it has failed and long after everyone knows it has failed because he thinks that his “values” demand it. Instead of “let justice be done, though the heavens fall,” the ideologue says, “I am right, and the world can go to hell if it doesn’t agree.” The ideologue is terrified of having to make adjustments and adapt to the world as it really is, because these adjustments reveal to the ideologue just how far removed from that reality he has become. The ideologue keeps redefining the justification for the policy, he keeps rewriting history to suit his own purposes, and he never accepts responsibility for the failure of his ideas, because he believes they have never been faithfully followed. For the realist, cutting one’s losses and reassessing the merits of a policy are always supposed to be possibilities, but for the ideologue the former is equivalent to surrender and the latter is inconceivable. In his greatest confusion of all, Goldberg manages to mix up realists with their opposites.What surprises me is that the sort of rigidity that Larison describes wouldn't hack it in most professions. It certainly wouldn't work in business, where individuals and companies that don't change their thinking and adjust to new situations find themselves made obsolete by the market. It wouldn't work in academe, since people who don't change their mind when confronted with new evidence are just ignored, and their papers aren't published. Creationists, for instance, aren't exactly wrong to say that the scientific establishment doesn't respect them, but this is as it should be because creationism is not science of any sort, nor is intelligent design. I believe God created the world, but the notion that it occurred in about six days, some six thousand years ago, goes against centuries of scientific developments. So I'm inclined not to believe that. It's all a question of who I'm going to believe: scientists or the religious right. There's little doubt in my mind who's more worthy of trust.
Ultimately, this sort of mentality does occur in politics but the religious right has taken it to the next level. They made politics about values, not practicality. Obviously, people need to have values in order to govern responsibly, but to believe, for example, that raising taxes is always and absolutely wrong and disastrous, even though it led to a huge prosperity boom in the 1990s, is a good example of what Larison's talking about. I suppose it's not impossible that conservatism could come back without reassessing any of its dogma, but it's perhaps unlikely. In scientific research, prevailing notions change when the old thinkers die off rather than when they change their minds. So the GOP might well be in for decades of rebuilding if this is true.
