In my continuing education, Eric Scheie has given me a very valuable lesson: sometimes the most obvious answers don’t make the cut. He has unanimously voted for, declared and crowned God Of Ideological Purity, Mikhail Suslov.

I have never heard of this man. Eric’s post paints a picture of a man who thought for thousands, if not for millions: But for many years, nothing happened in the Cold War without him having something to say about it. Disagreement with him could cost careers if not lives. And, as I said to Jay, he was definitely not cool or sexy!

There are the writers of philosophy, promoters of their thought: Jesus Of Nazareth, Buddha, Muhammad, Marx, Rand, and so many more. Then there are those who enforce the philosophy to its purity. Says Eric: There isn’t an “ism” which is not maintained by ideological purists, although not all isms were necessarily intended to end up that way. (Jesus might have been horrified at the excesses of ideological purity in his name, and who knows? So might Muhammad and Marx….)

Such is the danger of proud prophets like Suslov. They are not teaching the ideology so much as they are taking the torch of their self-appointed philosophical gods, making sure that their idea of their god is passed on, and, as history trudges on, that they too, be remembered as gods of ideology.

To be forgotten is worse than death.