Not an ideology

Ralph Hallow, a great political journalist for many years at the Washington Times, writes a profile of Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the modern conservative movement who liberals love to hate.

Mr. Weyrich, the founder and chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, said conservatism, though built on ideas, is not an ideology.
    "It's anti-ideology, a way of looking at the world, a way of life," he explained.
    What's more, "conservatism gets off course when it becomes an ideology," he said, shifting his weight in the wheelchair that has been getting him around town since a fall in 2001 exacerbated a 1996 spinal injury.
    He doesn't complain. Not about that. What rankles him is the tendency of some conservatives to make the movement a mirror image of the left."When conservatism becomes an ideology, then, like the liberal ideology, reality has to fit into the ideology," he said. "So you can't have any deviation from the ideology. Orthodoxy demands that you take this position, and that has never been the hallmark of conservatism."