He (Bush)'s a right-wing ideologue, not a true conservative

LAT ^ | March 12, 2006 | Jeffrey Hart

[spikeytx86]

Bush is prime example why I wont be voting for a moderate in the primaries.

[CowboyJay]

"Sure, having freedoms and how you exercise them are different things."

Different people have different definitions of freedom, based upon their personal belief system.

Right, hence the desire of people in other countries to have a system which allows them to resolve such conflicts without having a dictator simply impose his will.

Some find absolutely no problem with dictators and/or kings, at all (some in the US, even). Once again, this goes back to one's personal belief system.

You have a very peculiar defenition of freedom. Personally, I'll take John Paul II's:"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

My point exactly. For example: the 9/11 Jihadists committed murder/suicide because, in their particular spiritual belief system, they were doing the right thing. They were simply following the teachings of Islam. Doing exactly what their conscience told them they ought to do. Only Catholics feel obligated to follow the Pope's guidance in spiritual matters. Some people's spiritual leaders exhort them to do things that we in America consider unspeakable atrocities.

[Yardstick]

**Of course, Buckley was being flippant and would be the first to contradict it**

Actually, the line about ideology being the enemy of conservatism was actually Hart's, not Buckley's. I should have read that closer. But I think Hart would probably say that Buckley would generally agree with it. As it turns out, Hart recently wrote a history of National Review magazine (which was favorably reviewed by NR a couple months ago), and one of the key points of doctrine that Hart identified as being a consistent part of NR's editorial perspective was the rejection of ideology. Here's an excerpt from Hart's book:

http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/11/22/the_american_conservative_mind_where_we_are_now.php

"""National Review, most of the time, has shown a healthy resistance utopianism and its various informing ideologies. Ideology is always wrong because it edits reality and paralyzes thought."""

Also, here's an interesting passage where Hart seems to distinguish between agreeing with free market principles and being a free market ideologue (actually he uses the word utopian):

" Free Market economics. Carrying this banner high, National Review emerged during a period when socialism in various forms had become a tacit orthodoxy. The thought of Hayek, von Mises, and Friedman, among others, informed the magazine’s understanding of economic questions. At length, the free market triumphed through much of the world, and today there are no, or very few, socialists in major university economics departments, an almost total transformation since 1955. But the utopian temptation can turn such free-market thought into a utopianism of its own—that is, free markets to be effected even while excluding every other value and purposes…

[UNflagburner]

You seem to be arguing that freedom is a relative concept, because others have different ideas as to what it is. This is noncense. Just because some may prefer a king, that doesn't mean that now sefdom=liberty. Just because a terrorist wishes to redefine liberty as the ability to blow up an Israily bus, that doesn't make it so. In other words, their culture&religion leads the to make the wrong conclusion about what freedom is.

[CowboyJay]

"In other words, their culture&religion leads the to make the wrong conclusion about what freedom is."

Exactly.

Which is why we must continue to defend the American culture of freedom, and recognize the religious foundations on which it was built, otherwise it will be re-defined or destroyed by those who either do not understand or care for it.