Labels are misleading when they suggest clear boundaries between things that are more accurately represented as points along a continuum. Take the label of “ideologue”, which is less a pure type than a tendency towards one end of a continuum.

What would be at the other end of the continuum? I suggest “technocrat”, a much-maligned term that needs to be rehabilitated. What’s a technocrat? Admirers would say someone who approaches problems and challenges with the mindset of a scientist or engineer, seeking out information from credible sources, confronting their own ignorance, changing their minds when the evidence calls for it, taking disagreement seriously, and gladly accepting criticism to avoid error, because they devoutly wish to get it right. Detractors would say a technocrat is one who advocates narrowly technical solutions to collective problems and who fails to consider the humanistic or moral aspects of their decisions. Think calm, rational and a bit cold.

What’s an ideologue? A person with a set of convictions about how the world is and ought to be - as in, awful now but really good if not great later if we are able to implement our Plan. Ideologues tend to be uncompromising and have a weakness for either/or, Us/Them thinking. There are often Victims and Victimizers in their narratives. Think righteous anger, certainty, and commitment to a cause.

Technocrats and ideologues are the two poles of a continuum. Few people are at the endpoints. Most of us have technocratic and ideological tendencies. We oscillate back-and-forth along the continuum, depending on mood, topic, etc. That said, I think the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is moving in just one direction: closer and closer to the ideologue pole. I may be wrong, which I freely admit because, well, I tend towards the technocratic wing of the Independent non-party. And we technocrats embrace the possibility of being wrong (just another opportunity for learning!).

Links:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/11/01/rise-of-the-libertarian-technocrats/

http://what-when-how.com/social-sciences/technocrat-social-science/