*Posted by Joe Wooddell
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night (January 24, 2012), Barack Obama advised his listeners: “We need to end the notion that . . . politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common-sense ideas.”
For the full transcript click here. For the brilliant Republican rejoinder (by Mitch Daniels) click here.
I see at least two problems with Obama’s statement about how we shouldn’t cling to “rigid ideologies.” First, that statement itself is ideological. Second, it’s impossible for any thoughtful person not to have an ideology.
My dictionary app defines “ideology” as “the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group; such a body of doctrine, myth, etc., with reference to some political and social plan . . . along with the devices for putting it into operation.” I would define it simply as an individual or group’s belief(s) about how things ought to be. For example, advocates of the hard sciences (and many in the social sciences) maintain that we should only believe things verified by empirical evidence or the scientific method. This ideology may be termed “scientism.” Many in popular American culture hold the ideology that anything is ethically permissible so long as you don’t harm anyone else. Article 5 of the Hamas Charter displays its ideology: “Its ultimate goal is Islam, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution.” Article 36 shows their ideology to be “against the Zionist enemy.” (Read the full text of the Hamas Charter here. You’ll get really angry, but it’s eye-opening.) The ideology of humanism is this: “Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.” (Read the Humanist Manifesto III here.)
Everyone has an ideology. That is, everyone has views on what he or she thinks ought to be the case. My own ideology is biblical Christianity (at least I say it is; I don’t always live it, unfortunately). Barack Obama’s ideology is, among other things, big government socialism (notwithstanding what he says to the contrary in various speeches). Either he is ignorant of the fact that he is an ideologue, or he is well aware of it, yet wants us to think he is not. So he is either ignorant or deceptive on this count.
The other problem with his statement that, “We need to end the notion that . . . politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common-sense ideas,” is that this statement itself is an ideology. Namely, it promotes the ideology that we should build consensus around common-sense ideas. That’s an ideology. It’s way too vague, but it’s an ideology nonetheless. The first part of the statement amounts to nothing more than, “We shouldn’t have ideologies!” Anyone with an ounce of logical reasoning power can see that this statement is self-refuting: it’s an ideology that says we shouldn’t have ideologies. Okay, maybe it’s not that clear. Maybe it simply amounts to this: “We should lay aside our ideologies and pursue common-sense ideas instead,” but this is just rhetorical sleight of hand. It’s saying, “Look at me! I’m so reasonable and sensible and kind and good. I don’t have ‘rigid ideologies.’ I just want to work toward good, common-sense policies.” Pardon the colloquialism, but, C’mon man! Are you serious? Your common sense policies are so radically opposed to my common sense policies that the word “common-sense” is irrelevant. Spell out for me specifically what your ideology includes and entails, and I’ll do the same. If we can find common ground, wonderful. If not, then we’ll have to wait till November to get anything done, and that’s fine with me.
Everyone has an ideology. Figure out what yours is and admit it, argue for it, defend it, and refine it. I’ll do the same, and if your ideology doesn’t include killing me, then at least we can sit down and talk them over.
First of all, why do you repeatedly use his middle name? This seems like something that Rush Limbaugh would do to make a vague connection between the president and Saddam Hussein. Check El Rushbo’s ratings to see how well that goes. Next, you spend quite a bit of time on the liars’ paradox. You guys do the same thing for atheism because you value semantics over logic in my opinion. I don’t really care if I have an ideology or not, I just know what I think. I believe that science and religion were the same for thousands of years and that made sense. Slowly they started to rip apart and science has made incredible strides while religion has in many cases held the status quo and added some value to people’s lives. The problem is that the rigid adherence to authority and tradition has stifled so many people. Fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity, or elsewhere fills people with guilt and anger and fear. I am a humanist (and an atheist) and believe that we can understand ethics without divine intervention. If God said to kill your son, would this be ethical? If he told you to do this and you did, you would be locked up, and rightly so because you would be insane. The Bible simply doesn’t make sense taken literally. Many Christians (the soft ones like PCUSA) don’t really see it as being literal. They don’t want to say so to you because we have all been taught that questioning someone else’s religious beliefs is heresy and rude. It would appear that many mega-church Christians have stopped reading the Bible all together. The last time I was cornered at the mall by someone from Gateway, they knew nothing of the Bible and simply pointed to a tree and said that they knew Jesus from it. We talked for quite a while and I had to explain the parts of the Bible to them. At the end they told me that they had learned more from our talk than from their whole time at Gateway. I see the trends and know that young people are getting more reasonable. Many are waiting for their old Conservative Christian parents to die before telling the world. I don’t suggest this.
Totally on your side! It is the r i g i d ideology which president Obama is against, not
mine or yours, which are (hopefully) humanistic and peaceful. There is an evident
hatred in the article by Wooddell that makes me sick. I am a proud atheist and thanked
Christopher Hitchens (in time) to have made me a happy one. The more the so-called
reborn Christians hate this integer president the more they lose out on our future…D.H.
All ideologies are rigid, yours included. (This doesn’t mean they can’t change or be modified.) You think you’re right about the way things should be, and that I’m wrong, and you wish I would adopt your view. That’s pretty rigid. I don’t hate Obama, and there’s nothing in the article that should make you think this. You are reading into it what you want to see. I’m not the one using terms like “hatred,” and phrases like “makes me sick.” I am strongly opposed to most of his ideology, and I want people to understand that ideologies in and of themselves are not bad. Rather, bad ideologies are to be shunned, and good ideologies are to be embraced. Finally, by God’s grace I shall continue honing my ideology to be more and more reasonable and biblical. Thanks for reading and commenting.
You are correct in your implication that his middle name is not germane to the argument, so I have requested that the editor delete it. Your other points are irrelevant with respect to my article. I’m glad you admit you have an ideology, but you admitting this is not the point of the article. The point is to show that he does not admit it, but he should. He is either ignorant of the fact that he is an ideologue, or he is deceptive. I hope it’s the former. Again, your other points are irrelevant to the discussion at hand, and have been addressed in other posts. Thanks for reading and responding.
Great read friend, and I will be following you now. Lately, I have been thinking, “How could an intelligent person vote on Obama again? I can’t see how a majority of American’s voting him in the first time either, but definitely not again. This guy is against seemingly everything we hold sacred? We see how his”Araba Spring” is turning out. Who could vote for this guy? What could they be thinking? Is that many American’s that uninformed? I believe we as a country are at a pivotaql point like no other in our short history and if Obama is re-elected America may never recover!
Sir, I hate to respond to this but I think I want to, now I do not think u hate the president and if you do it does not matter here. However, I think you are taking issue with something that he did not deny. He did not say he does not have an ideology, and the intent of the whole speech was not to prove that he does not have an ideology. I think he meant to say that our rigidity prevents us from building consensus. I think he was speaking to both political parties and himself. I think his message was “let us try and find some common ground where we can make the country better by choosing to be flexible so that all can benefit in the long run”.
having said that, I thing you are being terribly disingenuous when you choose to bring in this Hamas item and then you maliciously decided for him what ideology is “Barack Obama’s ideology is, among other things, big government socialism (notwithstanding what he says to the contrary in various speeches).” Then you proceeded to judge him based on what you have decided that he is. You used the SLOGAN every republican running for president in recent decades use in their stump speeches and here it is “big government socialism.” I will admit I do not know everything about American politics neither am I defending the president I just thing you have misinterpreted his statement by saying, “The first part of the statement amounts to nothing more than, “We shouldn’t have ideologies!” NO NO NO sir he did not say that, he did not even imply that. To make it worse you brought in the Islam idea which I think is sad and irresponsible coming Christian professor.
I never said or implied his “whole speech” was given in order “to prove that he does not have an ideology.” I only said I was taking issue with this one phrase in his speech. I realize his speech was about many things, and nothing I wrote can be construed otherwise. About the Hamas charter, I included it (along with several other examples) in order to show how different people and different groups have different ideologies. Hamas is one example, as is Humanism, and I included links to their “doctrinal statement” or “ideologies” so people could see how destructive such ideologies are. I’m not sure why you are upset about this. I’m just giving examples of different ideologies.
Your best point is about how Obama never actually said he has no ideology. That is a fair point. I would simply respond by saying he did say (or at least imply) that he does not have a “rigid” ideology. But this is still misleading on Obama’s part (as I mention to Mr. Holger above). Everyone’s ideology is rigid. There are some things on which Obama would never compromise, and there are some things on which Republican lawmakers would never compromise. In these areas each one is “rigid.” And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with being rigid. The goal is to be rigid in the right areas, on the right things. But Obama wants Republicans not to be rigid with things on which they think they should, in fact, be rigid (or with things on which their constituents want them to be rigid and uncompromising). In other words, Obama is the disingenuous one: he’s making himself out to be this wonderful moderate centrist who’s willing to compromise, and he’s trying to make Republicans look like ridig ideologues who are unwilling to compromise.
If Republicans would let him, Obama would spend the country into oblivion. I don’t necessarily think he’s being malicious in this, or trying to ruin the country. He might actually think it will help. He probably subscribes to a Keynesian economic theory that says you can spend yourself out of a bad economy with government (i.e. “tax”) money. He also knows if you raise taxes to 100% on the top 1% (or even the top 10%) of earners in the country, it won’t make a dent in the national debt or deficit. Rather, I get the sense that he just thinks it’s unfair for all these “rich” people to have so much stinkin’ money. It’s his ideology, and it’s rigid. He’s been fighting for it his whole professional life, and he will never stop (unless he has a true “conversion” experience to a more sensible economic ideology). He looks like he’s compromising, but he’s just getting all he can in order to move the country in the direction he thinks it ought to go. His ideology is rigid in this respect. Thanks for reading and responding.
The Republicans have been using an effective ideology for the past few years and its call OBSTRUCTION. That RIGID ideology has successfully blocked or at least stalled 420 pieces of legislation with thier mighty and glorious filibuster. this has help to worsen the economic crises and they know that they are purposefully and deliberately doing it for the sake of another ideology. This one came from the great Rush Limbaugh – President Obama should fail. They are rigid in their dedication to the president’s failure not because he asking them to not do things against the Bible or their conscience. He is asking them to help him rebuild the economy. But no, they are rigidly intending him to fail while deliberately lying in press conferences and or at the very least using unsubstantiated ridicule and spurious criticism in speeches such as the one you referred to as brilliant. They blocked lifting cap on liability of British Petroleum oil disaster, so that bp could be held accountable. Then blame him for BPs disaster. They blocked closing loopholes to prevent offshoring American Jobs. they filibustered small business stimulus. then they want the country to believe that they are being responsible stewards, no sir, that is evil and pernicious. What kills me is that many of these people who are being paid by Tax payers including yourself are professed Christians. Christians, who are deliberately sabotaging the president’s efforts to rebuild the economy, while knowingly destroying the lives of the average American.
They did vote to support ONE thing though, and that is TARP, yeah remember that sir, tax cuts for the rich. When he took office the country was losing close to 600 000 jobs per month while unemployment was 7.6% and climbing with 47 million Americans having no health care coverage. 3.6 million jobs were lost. 1.7 million on his watch. And without the Republicans help and with their deliberate obstructions 3.8 million American jobs have been created. God bless America. Yes i agree that all ideologies are rigid. I do think by virtue of him starting a conversation to relax the rigidity i think he is prepared to not be as rigid, and i hope the republicans can too.
Mr. Alkram,
Please try to stay on topic. Like millions of Americans, you are passionate about what you believe. You should, however, probably stay away from accusatory terms like “lying,” and “deliberately” and “knowingly destroying the lives of the average American.” That said, the only point you make relevant to the discussion is your last point (about how you admit all ideologies are rigid, but that you’d like to relax the rigidity). Here’s my point, my response, the one thing I was trying to say in the post: No matter how far you “relax” the rigidity, whatever the new sticking point for your new, less rigid ideology, the ideology will still be rigid at that particular point. That’s my only point. I hope this makes sense. The fact is, the two parties (and individuals within each party) have various and different points at which they simply won’t budge.
I don’t necessarily think Obama is deliberately trying to ruin America. I do think his policies will, in fact, result in ruining the country if left unchecked, but I think he genuinely believes he’s shooting for what he thinks will make the country “better” by his definition of that word. I mostly disagree with his view of a “better” country; that is, I have a different definition of what constitutes a “better” country. He will be rigid and not budge on some issues, and his opponents will be rigid and not budge on others. If each side truly believes compromising on certain things will hurt the country, then they should, in fact, be rigid; at that point they are at a standstill, and one side will simply have to elect more people to get their agenda passed, or they’ll have to convert people already in office to their way of thinking. You hope your view wins out, and I hope my view wins out. We both have rigid ideologies. And by the way, I don’t think I’m being paid by taxpayers, as you assert. (Not sure where you got this.) In fact, I think I’m the one doing the paying (for a bunch of stuff to which I am opposed). Again, thanks for the exchange. Just try to stick to the topic at hand. Thank you.