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For Kirk, however, it is not fanaticism in general that gives cause for worry, but one kind of fanaticism in particular: "the belief that this world of ours may be converted into the Terrestrial Paradise through the operation of positive law and positive planning." By this definition, Jeremy Bentham--Kirk's least favorite philosopher--was an ideologue, but Edmund Burke--his most favorite one--was not. Reading Kirk, it would seem that there are only left-wing ideologues, and the term "conservative ideology" is an oxymoron that can make sense "only if, with Humpty Dumpty, we claim the prerogative of forcing words to mean whatever we desire them to signify."
Kirk admits of two possible exceptions to his insistence that ideology is a monopoly of the left, although each of them is cited to confirm his point. Nazism, too, is an ideology--but we should not forget that the Nazis, like all ideologues, held "that human nature and society may be perfected by mundane, secular means." Of all the crimes committed by the Nazis, the proclivity for human perfectibility is an odd one to choose; but it is Kirk's choice. And then there is the "objectivist" ideology of Ayn Rand and her followers, for whom Kirk expresses deep contempt. Yet Rand, in Kirk's view, is more a libertarian than a conservative, and libertarians take their inspiration from that quintessential liberal John Stuart Mill. Libertarians therefore have nothing in common with conservatives (a point once made, in reverse, by F.A. Hayek in a famous essay called "Why I Am Not a Conservative"). "The representative libertarian of this decade," Kirk wrote in an essay published in 1981, is, much like Dr. Jackman, "humorless, intolerant, self-righteous, badly schooled, and dull." Libertarians are "mad-- metaphysically mad.... I do not mean that they are dangerous; they are repellent merely, like certain unfortunate inmates of mental homes.'" You will not find many devotees of Russell Kirk at the Cato Institute.
It seems odd for Kirk to vent his spleen against libertarians, since, to him, ideologues believe in "positive planning," which is the one thing that libertarians detest. But liberals and libertarians do share a trait, and for Kirk it is the definitive one: they both substitute secular reasoning for the divine laws of God. Ideology, you see, is religion turned inside out. "Ideology provides sham religion and sham philosophy, comforting in its way to those who have lost or never have known genuine religious faith, and to those not sufficiently intelligent to apprehend real philosophy." (Mill once called conservatives the stupid party. Kirk is merely returning the compliment.) This is why conservatives can never be ideologues; possessing faith, and deeply versed in philosophy, they have no need of any replacements. "Because ideology is by essence antireligious," Kirk once wrote, "Christians tend to be attracted to ideology's negation, conservatism."
The opposite of an ideological mind, for Kirk, is a prudential one, and conservatives by their very nature are prudential in a way that liberals can never be. Liberals believe in abstract principles, conservatives believe in the lessons of experience. Liberals are extremist, conservatives are moderate. Liberals are universalists, conservatives are particularists. Liberals insist on perfectibility, conservatives insist on the limits of human nature. Unfortunately for conservatives, we live in an age of ideology. Fortunately for them, the United States is not an ideological land. Conservatives should go about their business firmly, but also quietly and cautiously: "Conservatism not being an ideology with pretensions to universality and infallibility, there can be no Capitalist Manifesto to set against the Communist Manifesto."
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