Once they gain enough power, the ideologues take over.
It does sometimes happen that way, but I don't think it is a continual cycle. Often it works the other way around. Parities or political movements often become less ideological as they assume power. And many of the most obnoxious things they do as they are corrupted by power have little to do with supporting ideological beliefs and much to do with enjoying power and the perks of their position. This desire for power and perks is actually pragmatic (for the individual involved, even if it usually isn't in the interest of the country as a whole). Sometimes parties do lose power as they develop their ideology to an extreme extent, perhaps more often they lose power when they have firmly implemented the more popular parts of their ideology, and lose a lot of their issues to campaign on. Often parties lose power when they lose their ideological vision either in pursuit of perks and power, or because success at implementing their ideas seems to difficult. Then they lose the strong support from their core supporters, and they lose the appearance (and often the reality) of having purpose and vision.
Which is why we need a party that is fundamentally founded on pragmatism.
That’s either an awful narrow or ridiculously wide base for a party. Its narrow in the sense that if you limit the part to ideas where there is a clear, strong and durable consensus that one set of ideas or policies works better in a practical sense then the alternatives, you will have very few ideas to run on, and the other party will probably adopt them as well if it hasn't already. Its ridiculously wide in that most parties and political movements already think they are supporting the ideas that are in the practical interest of the country.
I'm not sure that pragmatism can really be the core principle of a major political party or movement. It can be an important value, but you have to plug something in to it to determine what you consider to be a better pragmatic result. A pragmatist would believe in improving the practical situation if it could be done with a reasonable level of effort. But you need some criteria for determining what results are practically better. Pragmatism can't decided that for you. It sets up the equation but you need some numbers to plug in to the equation.
Also ideology is to a large extent a vision of what types of ideas result in a better practical result. When it isn't it is often a sense of what is more just, and I don't think we should toss concern for justice out and replace it solely with a concern for practicality.
Large changes in the way the country does things today in any area might be too much of a leap to be considered pragmatic, but sometimes such leaps are good ideas. Pragmatic not only means focused on the practical, it also means, or at least implies caution. Which is often a good thing but doesn't sound like the basis for a party.
True you did argue more against ideologues than ideology. An ideologue is not just a supporter of an ideology but a rigid inflexible supporter of an ideology. An ideologue is someone who doesn't look carefully at the facts and other ideas, even to the extent of understanding them enough to reasonably disagree with them. But you didn't limit your argument to inflexible ideologues but rather argued for a party where pragmatism isn't just an important idea, or its normal way of operating but the core principle. I could support many pragmatic solutions. I could perhaps support the idea of parties being more focused on pragmatism, that might be a good idea, even a very good one. But I don't think it makes for a good long term central tenant of a party. |
