Maritain about Ideologies

“But the most serious thing is that the words “right” and “left” no longer have merely a political and social meaning; they have taken on above all, at least in the Christian world – a religious sense, resulting in the worst kind of the jumble.[…] we should recognize, moreover, that in its zeal neither camp gives first place to the service of pure truth. It is above all, the alarms of Prudence that stir the Ruminators of the Holy Alliance: to bar the way to threatening dangers, to lock the doors, to build dikes. What stirs the Sheep of Panurge more than anything else is Deference to public opinion: to do as everyone does, at least as all those who are not fossils.” (Maritain, The Peasant of the Garonne, p. 27)