Name one good ideology

My contention is that this is impossible. If it’s good, it’s not an ideology. And if it’s an ideology, it’s not good.

This is one of my recurrent themes, but what has made it recur today is an interview with some Tory health official I watched for a few minutes this morning.

Presenter Kay Burley queried the woman, whose name I didn’t catch, on the dire state of the NHS. Don’t we need fundamental changes? Of course, we do, agreed the woman, and you can count on the government to introduce them. She then took in Burley’s steely look and open mouth, and expertly pre-empted the inevitable question cum accusation.

Whatever we do, she hastened to reassure urbi et orbi, we remain staunchly committed to the sacred principle of ‘free at the point of delivery’. Yes, she admitted mournfully, people do pay for the NHS through their taxes, and they pay a lot. But while she has any breath left in her body, that will remain the only method of payment.

Considering that the woman herself looked in dire need of the services within her remit, the commitment didn’t look eternal, but she certainly meant it that way. Why?

Here comes the first litmus test to distinguish an ideology from its cognates, ‘idea’ and ‘ideal’.

‘Everyone must have equal access to medical care’ is an ideal. ‘Everyone should have equal access to medical care equal in every respect’ is an ideology. ‘Medical care must be free at the point of delivery’ is an ideology too. But it’s based on an idea: ‘a fully nationalised medical care is the best way of providing it.’

This is definitely an idea, but a wrong one. When I lived in that land of greedy, money-grubbing medics, the US, medical care, which I needed lamentably often, never cost me anywhere near the 12 per cent or so of my income the Exchequer extorts for that purpose.

Since the medical care provided by the NHS is grossly inadequate, in addition I have to pay exorbitant premiums for private medical insurance. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that perhaps full nationalisation isn’t the best way to keep Britons healthy.

Moreover, if Britons were asked whether they’d rather pay 12 per cent (or in my case considerably more) of their income for ‘free’ medical care or, say, half that proportion for the kind that isn’t free, I suspect most would choose the latter. But the question is never put to them.

I know this, the interviewee knows it, even conceivably Kay Burley knows it, although the impression she unfailingly conveys is that she knows nothing about anything. But the two ladies are constitutionally incapable of treating the NHS as just one of many ways to finance medical care.

Yet that’s exactly what it is, nothing less, and certainly nothing more. Hence it must be dispassionately weighed against other methods and found either superior or inferior. If it’s found to be inferior – and it’s worth noting that most other European countries refuse to have a fully nationalised health service – then it should be abandoned and replaced with something that works better.

That’s how we know that the NHS isn’t an idea but an ideology. It’s impervious to rational arguments and held to be off limits for any kind of comparative judgement.

The late Chancellor Nigel Lawson correctly defined the NHS as “the closest thing the English people have to a religion.” And a religion without God is what any ideology really is – and has been since the term first appeared.

It was coined in 1796 by the French Enlightenment thinker Antoine Destutt de Tracy. The reason no one had thought of the word earlier is simple: there had been no need for it.

New words appear to designate new concepts or phenomena. In this case, the phenomenon was a mass revolt against Western civilisation, otherwise known as Christendom. The concept was replacing God with secular virtue based on academic abstractions contrived by people like Tracy.

So it has remained to this day. Tracy defined ideology as a ‘science of ideas’, but the more accurate definition would be a ‘politically aggressive secular creed springing from a corrupt, or corrupted, idea.’

Most ideologies do start with an idea, and some ideas may not be so bad. Ending racial discrimination, for example, is a damn good idea. That being so, any decent person should welcome any sensible steps towards putting it into practice.

But when that idea acquires aspects of a politically aggressive cult, it stops being an idea and effectively loses all links, other than etymological ones, with that word. It becomes an ideology that isn’t subject to correction by reason or fact. Unlike an idea, an ideology cauterises people’s minds – at least the parts dealing with such issues.

Most people’s minds aren’t so easy to invalidate. Hence another hallmark of an ideology: it gains public acceptance not by its intrinsic truth, nor by rational persuasion, but by a massive brainwashing effort. That’s what it takes for otherwise (moderately) intelligent people to accept, say, the critical race theory as a valid representation of history.

My examples show two ideologies that became what they are by systematically corrupting originally good ideas: that all sick people should be treated, and that no race should be singled out for persecution.

Most ideologies, however, aren’t like that. They start out as corrupt and then reach out-and-out evil by a succession of incremental steps. Communism, Nazism and fascism spring to mind, with all their numerous offshoots.

These are considerably more carnivorous than the NHS or the critical race theory, which may make some people overlook the similarity among all ideologies, a crossroads where they all come together.

Whatever their declared aims, all ideologies are driven by hatred, the urge to repudiate the core founding tenets and practices of our civilisation. This is the overarching umbrella covering them all, sanguinary or seemingly pacific, those that scowl at you with bared fangs or greet you with a beatific smile.

That’s why a good ideology is a glaring oxymoron. Sort of like free medical care.