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Jewish World Review July 6, 2005 / 29 Sivan, 5765 Senator Biden's words By Tony Blankley
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.' 'The
question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different
things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master —
that's all.' . 'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty
Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.'"
Mindful of the foregoing, Sen. Joseph Biden must have written a
particularly handsome check to the account of the word "ideology," because
in his July 4 op-ed he has the word ideology jumping through hoops and
making one and a half gainers neatly into the public debate.
For Sen. Biden, "The most important criteria a president should
use in exercising his or her constitutional duty to appoint justices to the
Supreme Court should be the independence and impartiality of the nominee." I
admired the way [Sandra Day O'Connor] approached her job: with
open-mindedness, without ideological preconceptions." I would hope the
president looks to these traits in selecting a nominee. When other factors,
however, such as ideology, become preeminent in a president's selection, the
Senate itself must engage in stricter scrutiny and take a closer look at a
nominee's constitutional philosophy."
The word ideology is one of the most loaded terms in politics.
It was invented by 18th-century French philosopher Claude Destutt de Tracy
to mean the science of ideas, but came to mean the set of ideas themselves.
The mid-twentieth-century Harvard academic Daniel Bell called
ideology "an action-oriented system of beliefs [whose] role is not to render
reality transparent, but to motivate people to do or not do certain things."
But the word's deepest villainy was given it by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels for whom, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy: "it is the exploitative and alienating features of capitalist
economic relations that prompt ideas they dub 'ideology.' Ideology only
arises where there are social conditions such as those produced by private
property that are vulnerable to criticism and protest; ideology exists to
inure these social conditions from attack by those who are disadvantaged by
them."
Interestingly, in the 1970s, the Marxist offshoot Critical Legal
Studies Movement argued that the law itself was little more than an
ideology, with the impression of the law's certainty and legitimacy being a
mere capitalist ideology used to deter "The People" from seeing that the law
need not be a tool of the capitalists.
In other words, for them, the law may be anything those with
power wish to make it. There is no objective law, only an opportunity to
deconstruct it to one's own likings. First get power; then re-make the law.
Now I am not suggesting that Sen. Biden is even aware of the
Marxist intonations to the word ideology. Those origins don't really
matter — except to etymology enthusiasts. But most of us have at least a
partially negative reaction to the word ideology — which is why, one
suspects, Sen. Biden and other Democrats use, and will continue to use, it
to describe principled conservative judges. If he didn't mean to be
disparaging, he might use phrases like jurisprudential philosophy, or
principled jurist, etc.
The reason Sen. Biden speaks well of Sandra O'Conner is
precisely because she was merely "open-minded" and never developed a higher
structure to her thought.
Yet most serious people, whatever their area of study, by middle
age have developed some structured understanding of their discipline.
The great liberal jurist Benjamin Cardozo was known in his time
as "a spokesman on sociological jurisprudence." Justice Felix Frankfurter
was called an "articulate and persuasive advocate of judicial abnegation."
Justice Hugo Black earned the title of "strict constructionist" and "first
amendment champion."
But not until recently have serious judicial thinkers been
meanly smeared as ideologues just because they have a judicial philosophy
with which a senator disagrees.
If I am mistaken, and Sen. Biden did not mean to use the word
ideology in a disparaging, name-calling way, then he is guilty of
anti-intellectualism — because if he only meant structured philosophical
thought, well, that is the hallmark of intellectual activity.
We are just at the beginning of a long and ugly fight. The
public is not going to like the specter of yet another Washington partisan
fight — but it is a fight worth having. It is worthwhile both because the
future of American jurisprudence hangs in the balance, and because while
Humpty Dumpty may choose the meaning of words, the rest of us will be judged
by how we misuse them.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Creators Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
