English irregularities and ideological labels

Have you ever wondered why there are theologians but no anthropologians? Astrologers, but no biologers? Zoologists, but no theologists? Have you never pondered the riddle of why a scientist is not defined as a follower of scientism? Why is a follower of Calvin a Calvinist but a follower of Luther not a Lutherist?

On papers and examinations I constantly come across my students using words such as liberalist and conservatist and I just as constantly mark these wrong, telling them that such words do not exist. The proper words are, of course, liberal and conservative. At some point it finally dawned on me that, in so rendering these words, my students are simply drawing an analogy from such parallel terms as socialist, nationalist, anarchist and the like. If an adherent of socialism is a socialist, then why is a follower of liberalism not similarly called a liberalist? It’s a good question, of course. Every language has inconsistencies, and English seems to have more than its share.

Truth to tell, I rather wish there were such words as liberalist and conservatist. There is a sense in which every right-thinking person can call him- or herself liberal insofar as he or she values personal freedom and wishes to protect it. But the same person must just as well be conservative insofar as he or she strives to defend existing good against the encroachment of evil. If ideologies are -isms, then perhaps we should indeed label those who take their liberal and conservative inclinations in an ideological direction precisely liberalists and conservatists.

I faced something of this irregularity in the English language when I was working on chapter five of my book. What should I call the ideology professing a belief in popular sovereignty? Should I follow Russell Kirk and call it democratism? Or radical democracy perhaps? In the end I settled on the terms democracy as ideology, ideological democracy, and democracy as creed. There are no -ism endings, which I would have preferred, but democratism is not a widely used or understood term, and is rather inelegant in any case.

Similarly, I would not generally take patriotism to be an ideological label, despite the presence of that tainted suffix. The patriotic person I take simply to be someone who loves his or her homeland, however that be defined. This love is an ordinate love, as Augustine would understand it, and not an idolatrous one that puts homeland in place of God.

Someone once said that those striving at all costs for rigid consistency have small minds, and this must surely apply to language. Had I tried artificially to limit all -ism words to ideologies alone, then I myself could probably be judged to have been in the grip of – yes – an ideology!