First, I shall quote somethingn I said in 2004 “During Bush’s press conference yesterday I was struck by two things. One, in his mind the only possible failure is a failure of nerve. He does not countenance the possibility that we are going further and further down the wrong path in Iraq or in general. Two he believes these things because of his belief in the neoconservative shibboleth that democracy is identical with good government and that the whole world wants liberal democracy. Any resistance is by necessity a small clique opposed to progress. ”

Ideology can make smart people stupid and stupid people think they’re smart. In the case of the former, it filters their information so that obvious and intuitive connections between things and reasonable hypotheses are abandoned in favor of elaborate explanations to fit the ideology. Consider the constant explanations that even the resulting chaos from our invastion of Iraq may be a good thing if it is never corrected . . . this after being told Iraq would be a model for the rest of the Middle East. And in the case of those who are dumber and less curious, it gives them a mantra to repeat in the case of bad news, unexpected events, or rare successes. The ideology is true, only people have failed it. Worst of all, in the case of all ideologues, the ideology can discourage rethinking one’s course and recognizing one’s setbacks. For the ideologue, like the religious fanatic, the sought-after City of Gold is just over the next mountain. Quitting now woud simply show that all one has done thus far in the name of the ideology was in vain.