Of course, Buckley was being flippant and would be the first to contradict it, but it reveals a basic point about conservatism and is probably more true than it is false.
**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…