Ever since the excesses of the French Revolution, the word “ideology” has had an almost universally negative connotation. Ideologues stormed the streets of Paris, desecrated churches, and liberally employed the guillotine. Robespierre justified the murder of numerous fellow citizens while simultaneously professing his love of liberty. After a decade of chaos, Napoleon restored order by taking power into his own hands. Surveying the wreckage of the nation, he famously stated that “It is to ideology, to this metaphysics in the shadows, which subtly seeks first causes upon which to base the legislation of peoples, instead of adapting laws to the knowledge of the human heart and the lessons of history, that one must attribute all the misfortunes of our beautiful France.” Napoleon restored order by acting as a pragmatist and doing what “worked.” He had no need for counterproductive revolutionaries engaged in radical philosophical speculation.
On the other side of the Atlantic, however, America’s Revolution unfolded much more successfully. The Founding Fathers utilized their profound talents to inaugurate a republic free from the excesses of the French. Indeed, they used their reason to found a state based on natural law and the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Alexander Hamilton began his Federalist Papers by framing the American experiment as a question of “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” Hamilton and his supporters affirmed the ability of mankind to create a government based on enduring principles.
The Americans differed from the French, however, in their realistic view of human nature. Madison famously stated that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Because human nature is flawed, governments must be structurally divided to prevent the abuse of power. This view of humanity radically differed from the French notions of natural goodness derived from Rousseau and Diderot. They saw traditional religious restraints as corrupting man’s innate virtue.
Coupled with this belief in goodness was Rousseau’s political belief that there could be no limits on the General Will. In his conception, the General Will was entitled to order all aspects of a state. Hence, the great sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote that “It is in Rousseau’s absorption of all forms of society into the unitary mould of the state that we may observe the first unmistakable appearance of the totalitarian theory of society.” Rousseau’s thoughts helped pave the way for the violent repression of Robespierre who said that “Rousseau is the one man who, through the loftiness of his soul and the grandeur of his character, showed himself worthy of the role of teacher of mankind” (Intellectuals Johnson 3).
In essence, the French were ideologues because their ideology blinded them to the nature of society. By contrast, the founders held a more sober view of reality that led them to frame an enduring system of government. But they also weren’t devoid of ideas. They believed that every individual possessed natural rights that governments must protect. When writing against a British sympathizer, a young Hamilton wrote that “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” These first philosophical principles limited the scope of government even as history and experience informed its creation.
Today we hear figures on all sides calling for less ideology. Like Napoleon, people just want to see something that “works.” Insofar as we reject ideologies that blind us to the nature of reality, this is correct. Ideas that deny the dignity of human beings and uproot civilizations are destructive and have no place in a nation’s political life. But as we utilize our experience to institute the best political order, we must also recognize that we can use our reason to discover true moral principles. Combining this with a knowledge of human nature and history doesn’t make one an ideologue. Rather, it makes them an heir to the great project that began nearly 250 years ago.
