You’re using “ideologue” as a dirty word, and bringing in Marxism to taint by association.
If an “ideologue” was right, in your opinion, you wouldn’t condemn him for being too ideological. If you had a vision of the social order that really was how things should be, you’d damn well push it on the reluctant.
In retrospect, I did get carried away a bit writing the above comment, but still, I don’t see any ground for your specific objections:
You’re using “ideologue” as a dirty word,
Only insofar as “ideologue” suggests bias and low intellectual standards due to prioritizing the promotion of ideology over clear thinking. This is, in my view, an entirely fair and objective way to characterize the article in question.
and bringing in Marxism to taint by association.
I brought in Marxism as a pertinent analogy, namely as another example of an ideology whose essential component is that it lays pretense to scientific status. Note also that I said orthodox Marxists, by which I meant the old-school kind who insisted on describing themselves as “scientific socialists.” (These are almost nonexistent nowadays, not least because, insofar as Marxism makes any falsifiable predictions, they have been repeatedly falsified for well over a century now.)
If an “ideologue” was right, in your opinion, you wouldn’t condemn him for being too ideological.
Well, when I read stuff written by people whose overall position has a strong ideological pull on me, I often feel awful frustration when I see invalid reasoning used to argue for positions I sympathize with. But I allow that ideological sympathy is probably clouding my judgment on at least some occasions, and you’re heartily welcome to make a correction should you notice this sometime.
If you had a vision of the social order that really was how things should be, you’d damn well push it on the reluctant.
Even assuming this is true, it is still a lesser sin than doing this pushing in the name of science, so I can nevertheless claim to be less bad, no?
In any case, claiming that all people are equal when it comes to ideological zealotry is simply inaccurate. Some people have much grander and more radical visions, as well as much greater zeal, for pushing their ideological visions on the rest of humanity. For clear reasons, ideologies that make pretenses at scientific status tend to be particularly aggressive in this regard, as the historical record clearly shows.
You’re using “ideologue” as a dirty word, and bringing in Marxism to taint by association.
If an “ideologue” was right, in your opinion, you wouldn’t condemn him for being too ideological. If you had a vision of the social order that really was how things should be, you’d damn well push it on the reluctant.
In retrospect, I did get carried away a bit writing the above comment, but still, I don’t see any ground for your specific objections:
Only insofar as “ideologue” suggests bias and low intellectual standards due to prioritizing the promotion of ideology over clear thinking. This is, in my view, an entirely fair and objective way to characterize the article in question.
I brought in Marxism as a pertinent analogy, namely as another example of an ideology whose essential component is that it lays pretense to scientific status. Note also that I said orthodox Marxists, by which I meant the old-school kind who insisted on describing themselves as “scientific socialists.” (These are almost nonexistent nowadays, not least because, insofar as Marxism makes any falsifiable predictions, they have been repeatedly falsified for well over a century now.)
Well, when I read stuff written by people whose overall position has a strong ideological pull on me, I often feel awful frustration when I see invalid reasoning used to argue for positions I sympathize with. But I allow that ideological sympathy is probably clouding my judgment on at least some occasions, and you’re heartily welcome to make a correction should you notice this sometime.
Even assuming this is true, it is still a lesser sin than doing this pushing in the name of science, so I can nevertheless claim to be less bad, no?
In any case, claiming that all people are equal when it comes to ideological zealotry is simply inaccurate. Some people have much grander and more radical visions, as well as much greater zeal, for pushing their ideological visions on the rest of humanity. For clear reasons, ideologies that make pretenses at scientific status tend to be particularly aggressive in this regard, as the historical record clearly shows.