A triumph for ideologues | Ojel L. Rodriguez Burgos

Every election is always dramatically called a ‘once in a generation event,’ or something to that end, which invokes the citizen’s civic duty to express themselves at the ballot box and decide the destiny of the nation. The United States’ presidential election is no different as President Trump remarked in the Republican National Convention: “This is the most important election in US history”. This rhetoric, used all around the world, is a symptom of how government has become so important to the pursuit of happiness of its electorate. 

Yet, it indicates a more prominent truth; that government has taken over large swathes of what should be left to the realm of private decision-making and has turned them into matters of government decision making. The cause of this shift in the power of decision making, is thanks to the triumph of ideologues, who have used democracy and the state as their instrument. As the result of the United States election shows, the ideologues have come to power again.

Australian political thinker Kenneth Minogue renowned for his thought and research into ideology; argued that ideology arises as a reaction to an oppressive system. Hence, ideology is an analytical tool which examines society, and determines the oppressive nature facing individuals. This allows for a complete understanding of the system- and the knowledge of how to change it. Thus, ideologues’ sole purpose in public life is to gain power in order to radically change society, becoming a sort of ‘messiah’ figure which is to liberate and save the community from its oppressors. The ideologues' stamp for change is consistently reflected in their pursuit of a perfect community, which threatens ordered freedom and the market economy.  

Hence, the ideologue needs power, it gains it by using its most powerful instrument, the ballot box, and exercises that power through government. The ideologue, in achieving that power, demonstrates the persuasiveness of the ideology, and one instrument of that persuasion is that it is seen to be scientific. In using that power gained, the ideologue tries to solve all the ‘ills’ or ‘oppressions’ in society, more often than not with disastrous social, political, and public policy consequences. This is seen with the increasing concentration of power and duties that the federal government has over whole swathes of areas which were left to states, local institutions and to the people themselves.

Whilst much remains disputed and in legal complication, the result of the United States presidential election is still being decided, but the trajectory seems to be clear; the triumph of the ideologues of modern liberalism. The rhetoric of the Biden campaign, its supporters, and Democratic candidates alike was predicated upon the word; change. But as ideologues, this change involves a radically transformative approach to what they perceive to be oppression, supposedly inherent, in the American system. The policy prescriptions for America of the current Democratic Party are all based in a dangerous rationalism and falsity that governments in DC or state capitals unilaterally know what is best for society, the family, and the individual. This permeates their thinking as far as seeing the realm of private family life as no boundary to their necessary encroach and potentially democratically wrecking political gerrymandering as permissible.

Thus, they advocate changing or destroying the entire system, by calling for court packing without taking to consideration for the institution of the Supreme Court. The elimination of the electoral college and the scrapping of two senators per state symbolises the advocation of a dangerous majoritarianism with the predictable pressures it would create on the Union. Furthermore, theirs appears to be a self-justified mandate for using state power to ‘solve’ all societal problems- alongside displacing personal duty, responsibility and social institutions such as religious organisations, rather than trying to support these vital actors in society. The consequence being that individuals now happily delegate their duty and responsibilities to government, without realising the dangers this poses to ordered freedom. 

The suffering neighbour on the individual’s street was formerly his own moral duty to assist. Yet government has stolen this ministry from the public, whilst seeming entirely indifferent as to whether the public continue undertaking it themselves- showing little if any interest in encouraging such behaviour. In doing so, usurping charitableness as a necessary virtue within a community and providing individuals with excuse to longer act in a conscientious manner.

However, this is not something that should be surprising for those of us who have always opposed political idealism of this nature. Progressive forces since the early 20th century, then again in the decades of the 30s,  60s, and 70s have tried to revolutionise the American system. First, by democratisation, with the creation of ballot measures, recall, and the 17th amendment. Second, the expansion of federal power into areas of policy such as health, education etc. which were previously considered outside of the competences of the Federal government. Third, the use of judicial review to achieve goals dear to the liberalisers. 

These ideologues are on a crusade to liberate and save society based on abstract principles, with the consequences that our ordered freedom, the market economy, and the collective wisdom that has guided America, are in peril. Ideologues are not only present within the Democratic Party, but some within the Republican Party have also become abstract ideologues in bids to stay in power. Both types of abstract ideologues are dangerous and should be rejected. Much of what happpens in the United States eventually transpires in all periphery Global North nations by an unseen sociopolitical osmosis. Thus, as the election campaign’s result shows, the triumph and the return of ideologues- who would seek displace what is remaining and organic in our traditional civil life in their bid to perfect human society- ought to be of deep concern to all. 

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