>He wrote a "summing up" column as a last hurrah and his key takeaway was that the most dangerous people in the world are ideologues - no matter what the ideology.
>Anything can be justified, he said, once you make ideas more important than individuals.
>
>I agree with him 100%.


Sorry, but I don't agree with that. (Replying to both you and Bill). It's a false dichotomy between ideas and people.

Ideas DO matter.

When I hear people criticize our current president for being too ideological, I cringe. It's not a matter of being ideological "per se", it's a matter of good ideas versus bad ones.

The American revolution and the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are strongly rooted in ideology and the concept of individual rights. (Yes, as you pointed out correctly yesterday, not consistently, as many of our Founding Fathers were slave owners). Ultimately, it's a matter of whether a framework of ideas protect things like (for instance) property rights. So proper ideas are there to protect individuals, not to make the world more dangerous.