Commentary
Here’s why everyone doesn’t accept my political opinions as soon as I state them: I am principled, you are stubborn, and that guy over there is an ideologue. And if you don’t believe me, ask anyone. Except that guy over there who calls me an ideologue. Hey, wait a minute…
The insult is everywhere. But it’s vacuous. When a long-forgotten crucial report on Canadian health care was hailed as non-ideological by one commentator and pilloried as ideological by another, it told you nothing about the report or even why the former liked it and the latter didn’t. If one had praised it as socialist and the other condemned it ditto, you’d have gotten some sense of it, and them. By contrast, “you’re an ideologue, no you are” disquietingly recalls a mindless schoolyard taunt….