People with single all-explaining ideologies have a tendency to let their philosophic blinders distort how they view empirical reality

People with single all-explaining ideologies have a tendency to let their philosophic blinders distort how they view empirical reality.... he decided to abandon the belief that a single ideology can be applied to all problems. There are a lot of different goods in society: liberty, social justice, equity, community, virtue, prosperity. It’s crazy, Taylor argued, to prioritize one of those goods in nearly every single policy context. And yet that’s what ideologues do....

Excerpt from David Brooks, "A New Center is Born" - NYT

The words above made some sense based on my experiences inside caucus politics in the UFT.

There are ideologues on the left and the right - and probably in the middle. One of my complaints about so many socialists, especially Marxists, is that they are locked into an ideology that supposedly explains all. But then again we find splits, with so many socialist branches and ideologies, each one with their own ideology and analysis that distort empirical reality.

I can pin the current UFT election and caucus mess to these same factors - ideologues acting under theories rather than the realities on the ground but will expound further in upcoming posts.

I don't generally agree with David Brooks and I had a lot to disagree with in this column. Here he is talking about a former libertarian who saw what a straight jacked the free free free market ideology had locked libertarians into. Like government is always bad bad bad leads to bad privatization schemes. His false equivalency of comparing Donald Trump on the right with Bernie Sanders on the left is an indication of Brooks' own locked box ideologies -- and don't forget Brooks' history of supporting ed deform and attacking teachers and their unions.

Here are the blogs I've done on Brooks and ed deform.

March 17, 2009: A Clueless David Brooks
May 9, 2009:David Brooks is More Clueless Than Ever
May 13, 2009: Ravitch - MUST READ: What 'The Harlem Miracle' Really Teaches 

June 16, 2008: David Brooks and the Status Quo at the NY TimesJune 21, 2008: Responding to David Brooks

July 29, 2008: Michael Fiorillo Challenges David Brooks

March 20, 2014: Newark Teacher Endorses Ras Baraka and Slams David Brooks for Jeffries Endorsement
Dec 12, 2008: The New Know Nothings

Dec. 13, 2008: Pathetic Letter to Times From Weingarten