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Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies
David T. Koyzis
InterVarsity Press, 256 pages, $18

David Koyzis's new book is about ideologies. And I know ideologies. I spent my teen years in Barry Goldwater's Arizona. Senator Goldwater's most famous statement (uttered near the end of his acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican convention) demonstrates the very nature of ideology: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And … moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!"

Ideologies, says Koyzis, take some good thing from God's creation and elevate it out of its natural order, often treating it as a source of salvation and a kind of substitute god. The language of ultimacy in Goldwater's great punch line illustrates Koyzis's point about elevating something God called "very good" out of its place. Does anything other than God deserve our "extremism"?

Koyzis, who teaches political science at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, draws on the work of economist Bob Goudzewaard to argue that ideologies are actually idolatries. Think about the great ideologies: liberalism, conservatism, democracy, socialism, nationalism. Each elevates some particular good thing and seeks from it some kind of social salvation. Liberalism worships the freedom of the individual. Conservatism venerates history as a source of norms. Democracy confuses the will of people with the voice of God. Nationalism sacrifices all to the political or ethnic community. Socialism reveres common ownership.

Ideologies go beyond inventing false gods: they distort God's good creation to invent their own devils and their own eschatologies. Marxists, for example, see foundational evil in the division of labor. And their new earth is the classless society.

Ideologies also distort our view of creation: This is captured in a telling piece dialogue from the 1985 movie, White Nights. In the film, Raymond Greenwood, an African American entertainer who has defected to the Soviet Union, tells a Russian official that he wants to produce West Side Story.

"I saw it years ago in America," replies Colonel Chaiko. "With the original cast. Years ago. Marvelous.  A very accurate picture of the race conflict in America. You should perform it in Moscow."

The worth of an artistic production for this Russian official is its ideological message. West Side Story is indeed framed by the not very newsworthy fact that America has a perennial race problem. But the musical's value resides in its many merits, including artistic excellence in poetry, choreography, and composition; a compelling vision of all-conquering love; and (in "Gee, Officer Krupke") its burlesque of therapeutic solutions to gang violence. Sadly, it is in the nature of ideology to reduce art to propaganda.

Ideology also replaces principles with goals. One particularly egregious form of nationalism, the National Socialism of the Third Reich, sacrificed principles of freedom, equality, and justice in the horrific, genocidal pursuit of racial purity. Likewise, South African apartheid, justified all manner of violence in the service of maintaining the systemic privileges of Afrikaners. Both nationalisms were given a Christian gloss by its theologians, offering us in retrospect a clear view of the idolatry embedded in these ideologies.

Though ideologies have brought disaster, they have also brought us blessing. Koyzis writes, "The key to approaching properly the ideologies lies in an initial effort to understand their appeal, and hence their legitimate creational underpinnings.  It makes no sense to assume that they have got something wrong unless we have first grasped what they have got right." And usually, what the ideologies have got wrong is a clue to what they have got right.

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47